Bøger af Michael Kiefer

All Jake on the Western Front A novel by Michael KieferOn his 80th birthday, Webster Major "Jake" Brown sat down with a tape recorder to talk about his service in World War I -and the woman he left behind.In 1918, he was an Army electrician in France building air fields and supply depots with the U.S. Army Air Service. Yette was a 20-year-old French woman working for the YMCA.Jake's commanding officer thought Jake had "pluck," and he put him in harm's way. Jake just called it "luck": The bad luck to get into a jam - the backseat of a biplane over Belleau Wood; "over the top" in the Argonne Forest; AWOL in Alsace to rescue Yette's younger sister - and the good luck to get himself out of it. But he never got over the girl.One hundred years after Jake came home from France, his great-nephew happened upon the tape recordings and a cache of letters from Yette, then traveled to France to piece together a love story with an ending that would surprise even Jake.Michael Kiefer is a long-time journalist and the author of Chasing the Panda; the novels Speaking English, The Lion Hunter, and Another Monk's Tale; and the travel books Into Umbria and Swiss Seasons.

New and used travel stories about the Umbria region of Italy by Michael Kiefer.Michael Kiefer has been a travel writer for nearly 30 years. Here are engaging essays from his forays to the Umbrian region of Italy while researching the novel, Another Monk's Tale. Kiefer writes about learning Italian, food and wine, St. Francis and his hometown of Assisi, as well as the sights and people of Citta di Castello, Narni and Orvieto. Many of these stories appeared in slightly different form in The Arizona Republic, where Kiefer is a staff reporter, and in American Way and TravelGirl magazines.

Michael lives in a world where English always seems to be strained through a foreign accent. His Mexican-born wife, Sofi, calls him Miguelito; his Hungarian boss, Rudy, calls him Mischa; and he dodges thugs and seductresses in the Greek and Hispanic and Eastern European neighborhoods of Chicago's North Side where he works as a janitor. He once was a high-school Spanish teacher turned freelance travel writer, full of himself and living large, but his world and his mental health unraveled after he was kidnapped, shot, and almost killed while on a press junket to the Amazon. He is nursed back to health by rock-solid Sofi and taken under the wing of Rudy, the quick-witted, not-so-honest super of their apartment building. Michael's brother-in-law, Pauly, a font of funny, if impractical old-neighborhood advice, and Myron Clyne, a stand-up comedian with a smart and biting sense of humor, accompany him on his urban and international picaresque journeys. When Michael finally recovers physically and emotionally from his gunshot wounds, he lands a job teaching English to immigrants at a community college. Then his jungle assailant turns up as a student in class, and to keep from sinking back into madness, he plots revenge. "Michael Kiefer's prose sounds as immediate and true as a gunshot in a jungle. Speaking English is a tight, vivid slide into obsession, an unforgettable tale of love, violence and the complexities of revenge. It is a compelling page-turner that is also laugh-out-loud funny." --Barry Graham, author of The Book of Man and The Wrong Thing

In 1936, Quentin Young, a 22-year-old Chinese American, led American socialite Ruth Harkness on a 1,500-mile expedition into the remote mountains of Sichuan. Braving warlords and primitive tribes, the duo captured a giant panda and brought it back alive, the first time a live panda had been seen by the Western world. Hunters and scientists assumed the pair had stolen the animal. When it became clear the find was genuine, Ruth Harkness became a celebrity. But Quentin Young, together with his brother and fellow guide, Jack, was swept into the chaos of World War II and became a spy. A few years ago, Michael Kiefer discovered Quentin, now elderly and living in the United States. The resulting book sets the record straight. "The public first became enchanted with pandas in 1936 when Ruth Harkness brought an infant to the United States. In this fascinating and compelling account, Michael Kiefer relates in unique detail the intriguing background to this even which two Chinese-American naturalists made possible. This book is a valuable historical contribution as well as a rousing tale of adventure." --George B. Schaller, author of The Last Panda "...a fascinating account of brotherly antagonism and the complexities of Chinese-American life in the twentieth century." --Times Literary Supplement, London "Readers interested in either this or the more traditional kind of endangered species will enjoy this well-researched, nuanced tale." --Publishers Weekly "...an exciting account of an unlikely expedition. --Booklist "... a truly rollicking tale of adventure, romance, jealousy and mystery that recounts the days of Great White Hunters in the first half of the 20th century." --United Press International

A Saint and a Sinner in an Umbrian Convent Mark Bradomin is an aging Don Juan, a professor of Spanish literature fired for seducing students. His career ruined, he takes a job teaching English in Italy and ends up living as a night watchman in an abandoned Franciscan friary, where he continues his philandering -- until he discovers that the building is inhabited by the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. Saints don't need redemption; sinners do, and some saints are less judgmental than others. Mark and Francis become friends and confidants. But Mark's redemption comes from elsewhere. He falls in love with Victoria, a beautiful Mexican woman on a self-imposed exile of her own, and when she refuses his attentions, he decides to become a Franciscan friar, much to the disapproval of Francis. Another Monk's Tale is an irreverant romp across three cultures, a tale of sex and religion, and other things that are not supposed to be discussed in polite conversation.

Lanny Klegg goes by the book. He's a straight-laced law enforcement officer for Arizona's Game and Fish Department, and his job is to track down a bounty hunter who is illegally killing mountain lions for renegade ranchers. Silas Garner is a cowboy born 100 years too late, and he's so methodical and arrogant as a hunter and houndsman that he will be easy to catch in the act of killing the big cats. But Lanny's got his conflicts: He was raised in a ranching family and he understands why ranchers want the lions dead. He's haunted by the ghost of his cousin and best friend and driven by his cousin's lover, an overzealous environmental attorney who wants Garner's killing to stop. And he's distractedly in love with a beautiful wildland firefighter named Frida, who's got ghosts of her own. His biggest conflict, though, is that he owes his life to Garner, who once pulled him and Frida out of a freak wildfire inferno. But he's got his job and his principles, even if sticking to them may cost him the love of his life. And as both men track their prey, the game warden and the lion hunter discover that they have equally compelling moral codes, and they struggle to hold on to them through an emotional chase across Arizona's wildest country, into the courtroom and back out onto the landscape they love. The Lion Hunter is based on real-life environmental cases and issues of Arizona in the 1990s. *** Michael Kiefer's third book is a novel of cold beauty, a tale of men consumed by hungers and obsessions they can neither understand nor resist. In prose as elegantly haunting as the image of the animal of the title, the Lion Hunter takes the reader on a journey into the American absolute, a place of pure passion and need. --Barry Graham, author of The Book of Man and The Wrong Thing *** The ground of Arizona asks hard questions and swats away easy answers. Michael Kiefer's The Lion Hunter takes you to the places where the cities fade away and the lions and the men who kill lions hold their teach-ins. It is about a dying breed of men chasing the ghost of themselves inside the whispered freedom of the lions. You'll envy both breeds no matter what your politics. --Charles Bowden, author of Murder City, Down by the River and Blues for Cannibals

Das vorliegende Buch ist eine der ersten empirischen Untersuchungen zur gewalttätigen salafistischen Jugendszene in Deutschland. Die hier ausgewerteten Chat-Protokolle einer militanten Jugendgruppe sind ein wichtiges Dokument, um nicht nur einen Einblick in die gruppeninterne Dynamik junger Salafisten zu bekommen, sondern tatsächlich Radikalisierungsprozesse zu rekonstruieren. Daher hat das vorliegende Buch das Ziel, aus einer interdisziplinären Perspektive dieses Dokument zu analysieren und Handlungsempfehlungen zu formulieren. Insofern stellt es für den deutschen Kontext eine Pionierarbeit dar.