Lowell Thomas, Sr.

How pleasant--and why not?--to be Lowell Thomas. At the start of WW II (where Good Evening, Everybody ended), you and your Pawling, N.Y., neighbors want to ""get into the war"" by turning the area's country-gentleman facilities into a serviceman's rest center--so you approach old pal ""Hap"" Arnold, head of the Army air forces, who jumps at the offer. General Jimmy Doolittle stops by, and you gather more material for that long-brewing biography; he'll be off to bomb Tokyo soon, another chapter to work in. Meanwhile you're on the radio every night--and snap at the invitation by the head of Pan Am to visit US bomber-transport bases on the South American coast and broadcast on down to Rio. Over in the European Theater of Operations, courtesy again of Hap Arnold, you have a rousing reunion with WW I Sea Devil (and book subject) yon Luckncr in just-captured Halle, squeeze into a bomber headed for Berlin, learn of Mussolini's assassination at lunch with Mark Clark, and get an immediate interview with the Pope. You're bushed, but there's still a war on in the Pacific, so you answer Doolittle's summons to circle the globe, wind up flying the Hump into China, talking with Chennault, bedding down with Wedemeyer, interviewing Chiang. . . and convincing the most skeptical reader that you earned all your perks. Not that this is a book for the faithless: you gotta believe, like Thomas, in the holy crusade to save Quaker Hill from developers; in the once-and-future greatness of Cinerama; in all those elaborate expeditions to film exotic, unspoiled places for TV. But every episode has its quota of anecdotes, unforgettable characters, and interesting detail, and the accounts of his two great passions--skiing and golf--have a natural, nothing-to-sell zest. Thomas remarried at 84, on the Hawaiian island of Maul (""the Shah had invited us to be married at Persepolis""), and though his radio broadcasts ceased in 1976 (after a record 46 years), he's not about to settle down or clam up. Hardly a sour note here--just exuberant American optimism that age hasn't withered or custom staled.

Lowell Thomas may be best known as a newscaster, but to millions of Americans he is equally famous as a foreign correspondent, lecturer, biographer, explorer, and business executive. Since his first flight in 1917, he has visited every remote corner of the world and logged more passenger miles than any man who ever lived. In this autobiography, Lowell Thomas comes as alive in print as he does on the air. Thomas provides a vivid account all the way from his boyhood days in Cripple Creek through his later exciting adventures, wide wanderings and strange encounters all over the face of the earth.

This special edition of Doolittle's biography commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the first "blind flight" and Dooliittle's entire career. It has been said that he led. "one of the most 'useful' lives of American history. Doolittle once stated his philosophy:I believe we were put on this earth for a purpose...to make it, within our capabilities, a better place in which to live."He was a man of wisdom, humor, and warm humanity and a legend in his own time.

Lowell Thomas lets the late famed explorer and world adventurer tell his story in his own words. It is a wise decision, for the story is so rich and exciting it needs little heightening and commentary. Wilkins, a South Australian who became one of the first men to fly across the Arctic, led a fantastic life which included being kidnapped, participating in the Balkan War as a pioneer movie cameraman and in World War I as a photographer. His later adventures aboard the Graf Zeppelin and Arctic submarining and flying, round out an exciting portrait.

History is more shaped by Famous Men, than Famous Men by the course of History. Or so implies the biographer of Lawrence of Arabia and Count Luckner, long known for his admiration of men who think boldly and act accordingly. Here he examines the history of the West from Solomon to the present in the light of 101 famous lives. Each it seems had that ""vital spark"" of thought, ambition or decisive action which permanently altered the destinies of men. Nowhere in this series of vignettes however is this ""vital spark"" defined. Instead, in brief and succinct biographies, the lives speak for themselves as vital and disturbing forces working within a given period. Proceeding chronologically through such figures as Pericles, Charlemagne, Elizabeth I, Luther, Byron, Foch and ending with Churchill, we see them complement or clash with society, and often with each other. Almost every kind of person is included. Not all are virtuous: Tamerlaine shares equal honors with Joan of Arc. Not all are complex: the gentle Francis of Assisi is considered as important as, say, Richelieu. In some it is love of power, in others the simple love of fellow man, and in still others the tortures of psychopathic minds which drive them onward. And----through war, politics, exploration, art, and science----the world is drastically altered by each. The book is over-simplified in every sense, shallow in characterization, questionable as philosophy. Yet thanks to its range and facile style, its interesting focus on personality, it makes good reading for the wide audience this writer-explorer has enjoyed for so long.

"History As You Heard It is a daily chronicle of the years between 1930 and 1955, a collection of excerpts from the news broadcasts of Lowell Thomas. This is history in its most vivid form: an immediate, on-the-spot, day-by-day report on events and the people and forces who create and shape them. This is the diary of a country. It includes details of historic events as they unfold and reaction to them as well as common and trivial "news."

65 or so vignettes on heroes during the first year of WWII. Very moving true stories of extreme heroism.

The book is in two sections: explorers by land and explorers by sea and covers the lives of some of the less well-known explorers who lived lives of 'extraordinary romance'. The explorers include Chang K'ien, Hans Schiltberger, Joan Fernandez, Ulrich Schmiedel, Bertram Thomas, Rub' Al Khali, Pytheas, Will Adams, William Dampier, La Perouse, Mary Kingsley, and Ferdinand Pinto.

Story of a friendship between a fur trader and an Eskimo chief. One fifteen year old reader reports: ""This gives a wonderful picture of northern life and makes you feel you are going through the story yourself. I highly recommend it.

Lauterbach was an Officer on the "Emden" which shelled Madras in the First World War. He was imprisoned in Singapore and claims to have been involved in the Singapore mutiny.

In 1918, as the First World War ravaged the European continent, young American journalist Lowell Thomas traveled to Arabia to report on the revolts breaking out as an indirect result of the savage European conflict. While in Jerusalem, he met and struck up a friendship with the young British captain, T.E. Lawrence. Based on his travels and interviews with Lawrence, Thomas wrote the now classic With Lawrence in Arabia, the book that spawned the Lawrence of Arabia legend and served as the basis for the award-winning 1961 film of the same name. Fantastically paced with equal measures of fact and adventure, Thomas narrates the exploits of the infamous British agent who against all odds managed to join several factious Arabian tribes into a single combat unit. With Lawrence in command, this guerilla force would go on to defeat the great Turkish Army and ensure the eventual demise of the previously impenetrable Ottoman Empire. On the sweeping and the exotic Arabian desert that serves as the setting for this epic account, Thomas brings to life dozens of great historical figures including Emir Feisel, King Hussein I of Hedjaz, British General Edmund Allenby, and Lawrence, the enigmatic, “modern knight of Arabia.” With Lawrence in Arabia is a must-have for every history buff and arm-chair adventurer.

This 1928 bestseller by the internationally renowned journalist Lowell Thomas was the first American account of German submariners to offer a sympathetic, behind-the-scenes look at the men who prowled the English Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean in U-boats. Widely known for his news dispatches from the battlefields of World War I, Thomas was immediately successful with this vivid portrait of undersea warfare, which revealed details of the new technology. In his inimitable style, Thomas allows his subjects to tell their stories in their own words, rendering an infinitely interesting look at the challenges of life aboard these early submarines. Their dramatic oral histories tell of Walther Schwieger's sinking of the Lusitania, of the seven U-boat raiders sent to lay mines across the Atlantic and sink merchant ships off the coast of the United States, and of other riveting trials and accomplishments.

Here are Bleriot, Byrd, Doolittle, Alcock, and Brown and the others—plus the 1965 round-the-world flight over both poles! Within a few miles of the famed chalk cliffs of Dover, horror-filled spectators gasped as a little plane they had been watching spun crazily, hopelessly out of control, toward the grassy meadow sixty-five feet below. Seconds later, the plane righted itself as it crashed to the soft turf. A jubilant Frenchman named Louis Bleriot looked up from the controls, eyes aglow. He had good reason to be exhilarated—he had just completed man’s first long-distance flight over water. Louis Bleriot’s twenty-two-mile flight startled the world in 1909. This adventure, along with the daring exploits of many other pioneers of the air, is vividly described in Famous First Flights That Changed History. Both Thomas and Thomas Jr.—who had active roles in three of the sixteen history-making flights—recount all the harrowing details of the aeronautical feats of daring that have thrilled the world. Readers will find themselves involved in the romance and hazards of long-distance flying: with Lindbergh as he plays a breathtaking “game of solitaire” with the forces of nature; with the Magellans of the Air on their round-the-world air race; and with Ross Smith and his three crewmen on their trouble-plagued flight from London to Australia. Also related are some of the more spectacular failures, some of which surpass the successes in terms of sheer adventure. For the armchair pilot, there is no better history of the early milestones of flight, and the men and women who flew them.