Waxed Exceeding Mighty: The first ever Woody Allen-Biblical Epic-Vietnam War Novel.
(Where once the whim of the Hebrew God determined the fate...)
Where once the whim of the Hebrew God determined the fate of that tribe’s greatest heroes, in Waxed Exceeding Mighty it is by the adulteries of seemingly everyone around him that Adam Athelstan is expelled from his garden, enslaved in the desert, enthroned in the jungle.
Waxed Exceeding Mighty tells the ludicrously epic story of Adam Athelstan, an angelic young man who grows and sells, and sings to, very rare flowers. After his best friend’s scorned fiancé inadvertently drives a boat onto his harbourside glasshouse, Adam takes a job as a delivery driver for an obscene florist.
The moment he finally realises that his employer’s primary business is in supplying arrangements to a brothel staffed by suicide-prone foreign sex-workers, Adam is mistaken for the recently-fugitive mistress of a politician and sent to the desert wilderness of an immigration detention centre. He inadvertently escapes and, terrified by the advances of the widow sheep-farmer who offers him refuge, elects to return to the detention centre as an employee.
His naiveté soon garners an outside job offer and he is flown to paradisiacal Vietnam, where he so excels at negotiating the return of gone-native tourists to their families that on an Apocalypse Now-style assignment his boss becomes wrathfully jealous and decides that he is going to kill him.
(
Hector Grieve was once the angriest young man in the wo...)
Hector Grieve was once the angriest young man in the world...
He is now a hellraising soldier of fortune.
Protecting Cambodia's ancient ruins from looters, he makes bloodthirsty speeches to his men, drinks hallucinogenic whisky by the bottle, and boasts of being the greatest lover that Angeline Jolie has ever had.
When he learns that he's broke and that his father is dying, Hector has no choice but to abandon his gallivanting and return home, to outer suburban Melbourne--where he 's about to become once again...
the angriest young man in the world.
(Anaïs Spencer travels the world lying to men. As a Mossad...)
Anaïs Spencer travels the world lying to men. As a Mossad agent, an international aid worker, a Venetian countess dispossessed--for seven years her first-class flights and hotel suites have been paid for by the hapless men upon whom she subsists.But Exquisite Hours is a novel about a beautiful young woman who is tired of wandering. Confessions of love are becoming chronic. Anaïs is too often having to resort to her last line of defence--the rufie.In a matter of days she flees from Hong Kong to New York to Missouri to Bangladesh to Bangkok, at last to Venice, where she falls in love with her false-speaking match, a handsome young liar who survives by giving very fanciful city tours to very credulous tourists.But will her deceitful past allow Anaïs a happy future?
Joshua Humphreys was an American shipbuilder and naval architect.
Background
Humphreys was born in Havertown, Haverford Township, Pennsylvania, in 1751. He was the son of Joshua Humphreys, a farmer and large landowner, and Sarah (Williams) Humphreys. He came of substantial Quaker stock, his ancestor, Daniel Humphreys, having emigrated from Merionethshire, Wales, in 1682, to settle in Haverford township.
Education
At an early age Joshua was apprenticed to a ship-car-penter in Philadelphia.
Career
Before the completion of his apprenticeship his master died and he was placed in charge of the ship yard. Within a few years he established his own yard and became widely known as the leading naval architect in America. He was commissioned to fit out the fleet of vessels of the Continental Navy which sailed from Philadelphia in 1776 under Esek Hopkins. After the organization of the federal government, the defenseless state of American commerce forced upon Congress the necessity of providing a navy; and on March 27, 1794, an act was approved providing for a naval force for the protection of the commerce of the United States from the Algerine pirates.
On April 12, 1794, Humphreys wrote to General Knox, the secretary of war, suggesting some radical and important improvements which might be embodied in the six frigates authorized by Congress as the nucleus of the American navy. His idea was that, since the number of ships which the United States could support would for a long time be less than the number in any of the large European navies, such ships as the young nation did possess should be fast-sailing enough to fight or run at will; and when they chose to fight they should be equal, ship for ship, to anything afloat. To accomplish this end, he suggested, the new vessels should be longer and broader than any previously constructed, but should not rise so high out of the water. He maintained that a ship built according to his suggestion could carry as many guns on one deck as the others carried on two; could work them to better advantage; and, being more stable, could carry much more canvas. He was asked to supply models constructed in accordance with these ideas, and his plans were finally adopted.
On June 28, 1794, he was appointed naval constructor and directed to have the models for the six frigates prepared with all possible dispatch. The United States was built under his personal supervision at Philadelphia; the Constitution, by George Claghorn at Boston; the Chesapeake at Norfolk; the Constellation at Baltimore; the President at New York; and the Congress at Portsmouth, N. H. Humphreys' plans met with some opposition even after they had been officially adopted, and the Chesapeake was actually constructed on different lines and a smaller scale. The ships designed by Humphreys became famous for their speed and for their individual accomplishments. Their efficiency in active service fully satisfied the country as to the value of his innovations, and led to a modification in the system of naval construction in European countries. It is said that he received a number of offers to give the benefit of his talents to foreign governments, all of which he refused.
The first officially appointed naval constructor in the United States, he continued in office until October 26, 1801, when he was dismissed because of lack of further employment at the time. In 1806, he was commissioned by the government to purchase a site in Philadelphia to be used as "a building yard, and Dock for seasoning Timber for the use of the Navy of the United States. " After this was obtained he was authorized to build docks and wharves and to make the tract ready for practical use.