Showing results by author "Michael Meyer" in All Categories

Bengtsson's hero, Red Orm-canny - courageous and above all lucky - is only a boy when he is abducted from his Danish home by the Vikings and made to take his place at the oars of their dragon-prowed ships. Orm is then captured by the Moors in Spain, where he fights for the Caliph of Cordova. Escaping from captivity, Orm washes up in Ireland, where he marvels at those epicene creatures, the Christian monks, and from which he then moves on to play an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! President Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation when visiting Berlin in 1987 has long been widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The United States won, so this version of history goes, because Ronald Reagan stood firm against the USSR; American resoluteness brought the evil empire to its knees. Michael Meyer, who was there at the time as a Newsweek bureau chief, begs to differ.

Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall.

For three years Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown of his wife's family, and their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights.

In 1995, at the age of 23, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversations, and, per a Communist dean's orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, and Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China's changes as he was.

Vietnam, 1966. A US Airborne platoon is pinned down in Phuc Tuy Province. A deadly ambush leaves multiple casualties, forcing a desperate withdrawal. With bullets slamming into the Hueys, one is forced down only for the soldiers salvation to be a convoy of Australian APCs. As the dust clears from the battlefield, the ruthless Viet Cong local officer, Lieutenant Vu Van Thinh hunts for intelligence on his enemies. Amidst the debris of war is one man, a mortally wounded soldier desperate for help.

Oh no! A decade birthday is approaching, one with a big "0" in it, and he's losing it. Wake-up call required. Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda. Marvin Baines seemingly has it all: a loving family and a great job. He is about to turn forty, and just like that, the realization hits him--his own mortality is straight up the road. That's not his only problem. Suddenly he is unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, and his often quirky decision-making causes his whole life to begin to unravel. All he wants is an escape from his humdrum life. What he gets is something quite unexpected. "The humour is ...

Cuff and Rosie are lovers on the small Caribbean island of St. Croix, where rum and Bob Marley reggae and calypso rule. The sky is as blue as Cuff’s eyes, the turquoise ocean as pretty as Rosie’s cheeks, where the gentle lapping of the waves is a lullaby, and the swaying of the palm trees is a dance. The sandy beaches are as white as sugar. It truly is paradise. Their life there is idyllic, except for one thing—the unknown killer stalking them.

Millions have died trying to shatter the enemy fortifications, and Private Callahan and his comrades are ordered to try again. But this time they have something new. Lines of heavy tanks, their engines revving, and the sky overhead filled with squadrons of fighter aircraft. Their task is to assault an impregnable fortified hilltop, manned by thousands of battle-hardened German soldiers, determined to contest every yard of ground.

This book covers the two-year odyssey of our family owning an RV, from the decision to purchase our RV (named Winnie by my daughters) to the day we finally sold her. Spoiler alert: I am a bad driver and made so many mistakes.

US Army Private William Richards faces an experienced regiment of North Vietnamese regulars in the mountainous of the A Sau Valley. They have fortified the area for a determined stand and as the battle begins, both sides take heavy losses. But in the middle of this carnage lies an unknown and unseen horror. Something from the ancient past has risen deep inside the jungle. Powerful and deadly, it strikes without warning, leaving death and destruction in its path.

A true romance memoir. "This is like drinking tea and honey on a cold day." When tragedy struck, I thought for sure that my own life was at an end. I was wrong. This is the true story of how two stray rescue cats and a woman named Kitty, whom I finally met after a wild ride of internet dating, brought love, romance, and laughter back into my life. Love was then. Love is now. Love is forever. WINNER of the 2018 Stephen Memorial Award FINALIST for the 2014 RONE AWARD If you love reading feel-good memoirs, then don't miss THE THREE KITTIES THAT SAVED MY LIFE, where "Mike Meyer pens a tender ...

Not your typical travelogue. Instead, this book is organized by the nature of the experience the author had while traveling. I am an avid world traveler. I have lived in a variety of international locations, and I have both studied abroad and taught abroad. I have backpacked, camped out, stayed at youth hostels, and now, in my senior years, I have stayed in topnotch hotels and resorts. I have flown standby, and I have flown first class. I have hitchhiked, and I have taken public transportation, slow trains, fast trains, boats, and ships. I cherish my memories. They are solid, like granite, ...

Adult humorous fiction Famous Union College is a slow moving train wreck, a place where what is what is not. Two hapless heroes. An exhibitionist secretary. Bumbling administrators. A paranoid football coach. Conniving coeds. A sex obsessed football player. Who knows what will happen next... "The characters are all interesting and well developed - and many would be great study cases for a psych major." - HAMPTON REVIEWS "It's light and humorous with a bit of a wink and a lot of wry puckish humor." - Pop Bop, Top 500 Amazon Reviewer From the author of the endearing story THE SURVIVAL OF ...

Six years since the A Shau Valley incident, and the Ky Lan is back. Contact has been lost with a secret military facility on the Vietnamese island of Con Son. The final transmission is just a few broken words. They are being hunted. There have been rumours of this creature for years, with the stories covered up and buried to hide the terrible truth. As the country collapses from within it falls to an elite unit made up of special forces, military specialists, and others to return to the island to rescue any remaining survivors.

Noah Cage is a cybernetic supersoldier, a war hero and a man on his fifth and final life. He's a Lifer, an enhanced warrior. Repaired, rebuilt and improved after four lifetimes of soldiering. With each death comes further modification and enhancement, although at the loss of yet another piece of his dwindling humanity. Cage is thrust into the debacle of the Third Martian War. One that sees every man in his unit killed, including his best friend Rob Romero.

What if the government said that your missing wife never existed? Intrigue and conspiracy from Munich to the burning sands of Saudi Arabia. "As he sat there, he became one gigantic spasm. His body jerked involuntarily, without interruption, and he began to spin. The world was upside down, sideways—because what couldn't possibly be, inexplicably was. Blobs of perspiration fell onto the book. B.J. slammed it shut. He pushed the terrible pages aside. He was in such a state that the librarian looked up at him from across the room, frowning disapproval his way as sharp as Arabian swords. But ...

If one person can make a difference, just think what three can do. A tender story of love. Three strangers, each harboring a dark secret, become united by chance in a small Irish village, where the wonderful power of the human spirit comes alive. Together they take a courageous stand that will forever change their world and that around them. Clint Westerly was a success until a fateful choice he makes tears his world all apart. Tanya Wilshire is broke but hell-bent on committing to her mother's final deathbed request. 84-year-old Seamus Harrington needs to right an ancient wrong before ...

Laugh along with the antics of Sir Rodney. It's good for your health. Sir Rodney is An Old World charmer A world-class bumbler A farcical snob A lovable eccentric Sir Rodney, the hero of our little book, and his overly admiring narrator show us that pretentiousness and silliness are more than likely close cousins and that both have lived long and healthy lives.

June, 1877: the petite 29-year-old Annie Besant stands motionless before the 75-year-old Judge towering over her in the Palace of Westminster. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn is presiding over the scandalous 'trial of the century' where Annie Besant and her confidante Charles Bradlaugh have been charged with the unforgiveable crime of publishing and selling a guide to birth control. Charged with obscenity, she argued—controversially and outrageously, for the time—that it was a woman's right to be able to choose to have children.