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Kingetter
04-Sep-06, 04:49
This writer I admired especially because he did his 'homework'. He knew his subject and that comes out clearly in his writing.

From: http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mic0bio-1
James A. Michener was born in New York City in 1907. By the age of 10, he had moved to Doylestown, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which was his home until he left to thumb his way across the country. The great variety of odd jobs and experiences that followed formed an important part of his early education. He traveled across the land by boxcar, worked in carnival shows and, before he was 20 years old, had visited all but three of the States in the Union.
[/URL] Michener entered Swarthmore College as a scholarship student and was graduated with highest honors. He went on to St. Andrew's University in Scotland, and then returned to teach at the George School in Bucks County. There followed two years of "teaching others how to teach," first at Colorado State Teachers College, and then as Assistant Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University. Subsequently, he found himself editing textbooks for a New York publishing firm, a position that was interrupted by World War II, when Michener joined the Navy.
It was the Navy that introduced Michener to the Pacific. From his wartime experiences in the Solomon Islands came his first book, Tales of the South Pacific, which he mailed anonymously to his former publishing employer. Brought out in 1947, the book won a Pulitzer Prize. Michener won his job back as a textbook editor, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, with Joshua Logan, adapted the story into the musical South Pacific that ran for season after season on Broadway.
Michener crossed the Pacific many times. In 1949, he took up residence in Honolulu, Hawaii, and became actively involved in Hawaiian civic affairs. Ten years later, his novel Hawaii was published and became an immediate best-seller. It had been four years in preparation and three in writing, and he finished writing it on the day that Congress voted Hawaii into the Union.
James A. Michener has traveled widely. In connection with his books and articles, he has visited most countries of the world, staying long enough in most of them to become familiar with the customs and to know the people. Michener has also explored major themes in numerous books about his homeland.
He has published four dozen books, including the texts for five art books. His work has been issued in virtually every language in the world, with hardcover and paperback sales running into the millions.
(http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/photocredit/achievers/mic0-013) Most of Michener's works are historical novels, all distinguished by the thorough research which is his hallmark. Among these are: [U]The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Sayonara, The Source, Iberia, Centennial, Chesapeake, The Covenant, Space, Poland, Texas and Alaska.
Michener has also devoted much of his time to public service. In 1962, he ran for Congress as a liberal Democrat, but lost in a decidedly conservative district. In 1968, he served as secretary of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. From 1979 to 1983, he was a member of the Advisory Council to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an experience that solidified his interest in the field. Other positions included appointments as cultural ambassador to various countries, the advisory committee of the U.S. Postal Service, and the International Broadcasting Board.
His many honors and awards include honorary doctorates in five different fields and the Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award. In 1983, he received an award from the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities recognizing his long-standing and continuing support of the arts in America.
James Michener was married for 39 years to Mari Yoriko Sabusawa, a second-generation Japanese American, who died in 1994. In his last years, Mr. Michener was based at the University of Texas in Austin, where he died on October 16, 1997, at age 90.

A Literary Icon I believe.

Gleber2
04-Sep-06, 14:33
Michener was indeed a very interesting writer who has kept me entertained many times with his beautifully crafted and always thick books. The Source, in particular, was my favourite.

Kingetter
04-Sep-06, 19:11
Michener was indeed a very interesting writer who has kept me entertained many times with his beautifully crafted and always thick books. The Source, in particular, was my favourite.

He certainly had the ability to take one away from the flat pages of a book and set you down elsewhere - say a tropical paradise like Hawaii. The imagery and attention to detail, plus his own imagination and its opposite, a sense of reality, created what became South Pacific which though perhaps dated by today's 'tastes', remains to me as very special.
I would need to read all those books I did in the past - not an altogether bad thing to do.

Gleber2
04-Sep-06, 21:22
He certainly had the ability to take one away from the flat pages of a book and set you down elsewhere - say a tropical paradise like Hawaii. The imagery and attention to detail, plus his own imagination and its opposite, a sense of reality, created what became South Pacific which though perhaps dated by today's 'tastes', remains to me as very special.
I would need to read all those books I did in the past - not an altogether bad thing to do.

To be able to read them all for the first time again!!!!!!!!!