No comments about Women Explorers (Women Who Dare).

5 comments about A Journey to Hell and Back.

1. Charlotte signed my guest book and it drew me to her website. I am very glad it did because her story is encouraging and hopeful. It shows me that I'm not alone in doing my own will in disobedience to God, but that He is merciful and loving and doesn't judge me or see me as I see myself.
   
   While my life doesn't compare to her in most ways, I did identify with Charlotte in several others. And I noticed how well the scriptures she uses every few pages totally fits her situation. Those spoke to me as well.
   
   Ms. Johnson, keep on the narrow path and remain thankful for everything He does for you. I am now ready to read your book Mama's Pearls. You have brought me back closer to God with this book and I look forward to wisdom from you dear mother. I too get dreams from God like her.



2. My sister recently bought me a book. She not being an avid reader and all, it shocked me. She purchased "A Journey To Hell And Back" by Charlotte Russel Johnson. Charlotte is a local author from here in Columbus, GA.
   
   This book really touched me deep into my soul. It's a story of a very hard life started at a very young age. Charlotte told about how she grew up in the projects, left the projects and only to return to the saftey of the projects. She told us how she sold drugs right here on Victory Dr. A street many of us drive everyday. She told how she partied in Phenix City, right across the river where many of us work and/or live.
   
   Charlotte went through so much. She sold herself as a prostitute. She married a man who abused her to no end. She even discusses how she received her 2nd and 3rd degree burns. She tells you the stories of her many trials she had to endure not only here in Columbus, but also in Atlanta and in New York.
   
   Yet through all of this she has prevailed. She showes you how she was able to pull through and become a better person. For anyone who thinks their life is so far gone, or so far down in the dumps and it can't change, take a moment and read this heart touching story of one woman's struggle. And it all happened right here in our own community!!!!!
   
   Thank You Charlotte for sharing your story!!!



3. I have read "A Journey To Hell And Back" by Charlotte Russell-Johnson, and found it to be a most inspiring book, and very relevant to many young women of today, who are in need of the kind of guidance and insight offered by this book. I have also had the pleasure of meeting Charlotte Russell Johnson, and from my two encounters with her, I believe her to be as genuine as her personal testimony. Her book is a must-read for every young woman in search of direction for her life. I encourage everyone to read this book. It will keep you engaged from the front page to the back.



4. I JUST FINISH READING A JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK. GOD HAS TRUELY BLESSED HER. IT IS A BLESSING THAT SHE LIVED TO WRITE THIS BOOK, GOD WAS TRUELY WITH HER ON HER JOURNEY TO LIFE. I HAVE THIS COUSIN THAT IS OUT THERE ON DRUGS. I HAVE BEEN PRAYING FOR HER AND I KNOW GOD IS GOING TO DELIVER HER. I JUST HAVE TO BE STILL AND LET GOD HANDLE HER.

   MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS YOU CHARLOTTE AND I PRAY THAT YOU CAN TOUCH A LOT OF LIVES.




5. I work at a bread store and a customer was telling me how great the first book was by Charlotte and in a few moments after her leaving in walked Charlotte. I have read the first book and am anxious to get the next two!!!! It is excellent and I have sent several of my customers to the book store to buy the books as well!! Thank you Charlotte for sharing the experiences with us. I am hoping you will make the book into a movie.

No comments about King of the Australian Coast: The Work of Phillip Parker King in the Mermaid and Bathurst 1817-1822.

No comments about The Life and Martyrdom of the Venerable Father Diego Luis De San Vitores, S.J. (Marc Monagraph Series).

4 comments about Horizon Chasers: Lives And Adventures of Richard Halliburton And Paul Mooney.

1. Horizon Chasers...
   is a work still rare for our time. More biographical sketches in this vein need to be written; and in fact as this century rolls on I believe a recasting of the `social history' of the previous century will certainly be undertaken.
   
   I enjoyed your effort - and your style at times moved into the baroque with ambient touches that detailed a virtually untold social history of the Twenties and Thirties. Halliburton, as I have learned through you, is a self-cast personality, portraying the drama of `living beyond Des Moines' - and yet feeling the necessity of expanding the vision of Des Moines. He embodies the contradiction of a public and private persona; selling the former for profit, and the latter hidden and unknown to most: and yet not hidden within his circle in the `fringe' communities in Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, etc. Thus, as you in introduce Paul Mooney and others, your work becomes a parallel story of `straight' and `gay' life-struggles in a generally uninformed environment. Those tensions shape the communication and the terms of the relationships between the characters in the book. Nothing is lasting, relationships stay transient, words better not committed to paper seem better than clarity of feeling.
   
   I hadn't known of Halliburton's writing before reading your book; yet I've known many Halliburtons in my life. His is a tragedy (as is Paul's), and the number of events that warned them all not to proceed from Hong Kong were overwhelming. Yet, in spite of all the obvious, they sailed into eminent disaster - untested fantasy sailors in an unworthy craft. That was a death wish without a doubt. Mooney, injured and ankle in a cast was not even able to crawl to a life boat...yet he went along to his fate, knowing as he wrote in his correspondence that his fate was grim. Halliburton was then 40, aging and now less able to maintain the public-image (that brought in the dough); was he able to fall back to the image of his private life with lovers and privacy at Hangover, and raise a garden yearly? Not on his life! So he cast away in a clownishly over-painted island taxiing transport craft to face thousands of miles of high seas. Joshua Slocum, he told his parents, had sailed around the world several generations before, so why couldn't he? Yet, Halliburton wasn't stupid. He knew the difference between Slocum's vast knowledge of the sea, and his own ineptness. His is not a wish for a triumphant return to San Francisco to sell tickets on his public reputation. His reputation was in jeopardy in his own mind I suspect: the public and private sides of him were - in lethal combat.
   
   Historical reappraisal is the obligation of writers who look back and shape the perspective of the past, collective vision. Halliburton and Mooney are symbolic of a multitude of literary and non-art aspiring folks who live in the `shadow'. How they handled that perception took many forms; yet one feature in common with many was the need to live in a dualistic manner. As we progress in this century, maybe greater circles of inclusion will reduce the need for shadows



2. Richard Halliburton was unknown to me until an old school friend referred me to this work. In many ways, the most dynamic and often worst documented decade of the twentieth century is the 1930's. The most dramatic change is of course that of Germany, a struggling liberal democracy in 1930 and the personification of brutish totalitarianism in 1940. I have done some research on the religion of a demagogue of the period named Gerald L K Smith, who began the decade as a minister preaching a message of leftward social change with a labor emphasis (well-received even in synagogues); at the end of it he sought support from major corporations and was well on his way to becoming "the dean of American anti-Semites". The odyssey of Halliburton and friends is another part of the patchwork quilt of that era, which the author tells somewhat episodically (as befits the evidence) in a distinctly literary vocabulary, perhaps to emphasize the Mooney connection. While the disappearance of Amelia Earhart brings enduring fame; that of Halliburton and company seems to seal an anticlimax. Almost in dramatic fashion his final descent into the Pacific Ocean parallels the descent into obscurity that seems his literary fate. Even as the assassination of Huey Long may have forever altered U.S. political history, this work helps give some idea of the courses cultural trends might have taken or heroes that might have endured.
   
   What I found most interesting is the subtext about homosexuality. While hardly a subject discussed openly in this period, there were obviously subcultures in major cities where it was openly practiced, if not accepted. This book provides both examples of and clues to its reception in three different religious traditions, whether actively or vestigially practiced: the Wesleyan (Halliburton), in which it is an unspeakable deviation from the path to holiness; the Roman Catholic (Mooney), in which it is a serious sin--from Trent on a matter of continual scrutiny in the clergy--but not one which cannot be dealt with; and the Jewish (Alexander), in which we see the obvious tension between the emancipated modern and those lingering condemnations in Leviticus written for his ancestors (original surname Levy). The interplay of these traditions as well as the movements in and out of sheltered enclaves is the area in which this book most illuminates, although in an oblique manner much like the indirect lighting often used by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose concepts also figure in the "dream house."
   
   
   C J Dull



3. Horizon Chasers returns to life its two principals, travel writer Richard Halliburton and "ghost" writer Paul Mooney with scholarship, literary flair, and personal interpretation. Both lives have a surprisingly modern ring to them, considering both died before World War II commenced. Amply quoted, Halliburton's letters reveal a man equally driven to popular acclaim and to remote seclusion; they also show the inner workings of a brilliant mind and complex man whose moods, even at their grimmest or most joyful, have an element of chic Byronic glamour to them. The chapters devoted to the early life of Paul Mooney are skillfully constructed, as they piece together from the fewest clues a person who, in other accounts, just seems to emerge out of nowhere. Horizon Chasers introduces us to him. From Washington, D. C., Paul was the son of American Indian authority James Mooney; this I hadn't known. Much to the chagrin of his sponsors at the Smithsonian, James, to get into the psyche of the Native American tribes he had been sent west to study, got high with them during religious rituals which involved the use of peyote. Be that as it may, James also wrote monographs on Native American life distinguished not only for their learnedness but for their lucidity and freedom from academic pedantry. According to Max, Paul inherited his writing gifts from his father (and, through his mother Ione, from very distant relative the poet the Earl of Surrey), yet, implicitly, earnest home schooling played a keen part as well. James Mooney died in 1921 when Paul was just sixteen. Paul was now the head of a household which included his mother, four sisters, and a younger brother. Like his father a free-thinker, but more anxious to see the wider world, Paul barely finishes high school and soon drops out of college. He hops a freighter bound for Constantinople, returns home, then goes to New York where he does some travel ad writing and hangs out with artists. About 1927, he goes off to Paris, returns home again, then (about 1930) drives off to California where, at a party of aviation aficionados and Hollywood stars, he meets celebrity Richard Halliburton and the two hit it off. At first a Halliburton fan, Paul moves on to become his general manager: he chauffeurs him about, sees to it that he gets his celebrity tan, and, in time, tries his hand at rewriting the rough drafts of his travel writings. Anyone who has worked for a newspaper or advertising agency knows how deadline pressures can encourage co-writing alliances. Materials get overworked. A mood is lost. Tired sentences need wake-up calls. Getting life out of last week's scribblings is like kicking a dead mule. Besides assist Halliburton, Paul also assisted ex-Nazi Kurt Ludecke in I Knew Hitler (1937), an early look at the Fuehrer and the earliest book in which I have heard the word "cell" used to refer to an organized unit of mischievous political activity within a host country. One wonders what other ghost writing and editing Paul did; evidently author Max looked. Horizon Chasers features a cast of hundreds, but the sheer number does not overwhelm. Supporting players include architect William Alexander, who designed and built Halliburton's 'dream' house in Laguna Beach, California, TWA pilot Moye Stephens, American aviatrix Florence "Pancho" Barnes, and German aviatrix "flying girl" Elly Beinhorn. Cameo appearances feature stunt journalist Nellie Bly, poet Hart Crane, poet/novelist Rene Crevel, "eco-poet" Robinson Jeffers, dancer Jose Limon, writer Ayn Rand, architect Raymond Hood, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, writer Charles Warren Stoddard, writer Carl Van Vechten, novelist Thomas Wolfe, and many others. There are quite a few people of whom I had never heard: painter Don Forbes, dancer Gluck Sandor, writer/raconteur Eugene MacCown (apparently, every-writer-who-came-to-Paris' welcome wagon). Also making appearances are Paul's Laguna Beach cats, whose descendants, one gathers, are now as populous as the descendants of Hemingway's cats in Cuba! Locales count in a book about a world renowned traveler, though it is understandable that not every place Halliburton visited is mentioned, but New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Laguna Beach (almost a character in itself) figure as main ports of call. Documentary and testimonial evidence support the book's claims. I count about 500 footnotes, varying in length from a one line citation to a fifty-line source rundown. There are about 75 or so photographs. A couple of these I would date differently. As one who is about to travel to Hong Kong (again), I would have appreciated a photograph, or map, showing me exactly where it was/is that the Sea Dragon was built and where it did its preliminary maneuvers ("off the Kowloon docks"?). Call it the Then (1938) and Now (2007) approach. I would like to put a commemorative plaque in the area. As letters have become lost and recollections dim, gaps in a story, which, in part, concerns cloaked or guarded professional and sexual relationships, are to be expected. As letters have come to light about famous writers following the publication of substantial biographies--as happened when letters were found of Stephen Crane, and later of or to Hart Crane, perhaps Horizon Chasers (in my opinion, a very special book) will jog further memories or produce a long-hidden cache of letters about free spirits Halliburton and Mooney.



4. As the foremost expert on the life of Richard Halliburton, I found this book to be full of errors and inaccuracies. The author uses the hook, Halliburton's homosexuality, to promote an inconsequential person, Paul Mooney, who has no historical significance beyond being Halliburton's partner. Even the vast majority of the photos in the book were used without the permission of the current owner, which is not the acceptable or correct way to go about gathering materials for a worthwhile publication. Other materials were quoted without giving the source or credits. My recommendation would be to wait until a better biography, with correct information, comes along and leave this sleazy book where it belongs, in the dust bin.

No comments about Colon: Historia Del Almirante.

2 comments about The Legend Hunter (Softcover).

1. For those of us, old enough to remember the "I search for Adventure" TV series, this is a fascinating book. We finally find out the background and the detailed travails of a great explorer. The discovery of the ancient tomb in the Peruvian desert has remained a secret that his partner Batanero has already taken to his grave. It reads well and adenture after adventure keeps the reader's interest until the last page is turned. It is too bad that the films have not been preserved.



2. Memoirs of a real-life professional explorer---a sort of "Indiana Jones with a dash of Lara Croft" who abandoned an acting career highlighted by study at the Pasadena Playhouse to travel abroad filming exotic and dangerous locales, which he then fashioned into programs for early broadcast television and the lecture circuit. This volume focuses on Latin America of the 1950's and includes a varied cast of characters from a former driver for the German general Erwin Rommel to an intrepid female journalist of the time, one Barbara Holbrook who clearly left a strong impression on the author.

No comments about Famous Scouts.

No comments about Christopher Columbus: Four Voyages to the New World/Bi-Lingual Edition.

No comments about More Zeal Than Discretion: The Westward Adventures of Walter P. Lane (Elma Dill Russell Spencer Series in the West and Southwest).