Nathan S. Mitchell Livres

The story of two boys from the Deep South - one black, the other white - who form an unlikely alliance during the post-Depression era. They survive racial prejudice at home and fight side-by-side during the war in Southeast Asia. They return home heroes, still best friends, and end up depending upon one another until their deaths. The black returns as an ace combat fighter pilot with the stars of a general officer. His friend retires as a senior enlisted man. The story also chronicles the close relationship of the boys' parents at a time when it was unusual and dangerous for the races to coexist like good neighbors.

"Is ritual a "forgotten way of doing things'?" That is the question posed famously by Romano Guardini in a letter written in 1964 to liturgists meeting in the German city of Mainz. Guardini believed that the future of liturgical renewal lay not in "improved texts," nor in the recovery of some mythic "golden age," nor in the "rearrangement of furniture," but in relearning ritual behavior. Christian ritual, Guardini believed, is not the contemplative act of an individual but the public deed of an assembly -- a community gathered in faith and prayer in obedience to Jesus' command. Can people and presiders today relearn this communal way of "doing"? Can they learn to "read" ritual acts simply by doing them, by performing them -- without being self-conscious, theatrical, and fussy? Over the past thirty-five years, Christian liturgists have sought to reinterpret ritual's multiple meanings by transplanting insights from the social sciences (sociology, anthropology). Have the transplants worked? This book tries to answer that question.

An in-depth treatment of what might have happened when a U.S. President decided to make illegal military weapons sales to Iran in exchange for U.S. hostages being held in Beruit, Lebanon. The plot reached the pinnacle of the U.S. government, involving huge sums of money, duplicity, theft, and even murder.

The Bane of Cinco de Mayo follows the ill-fated career of a Mexican immigrant who enters the U. S. illegally, becomes naturalized, and joins the Central Intelligence Agency. He distinguishes himself on black missions that involve international intrigue and assassinations. He becomes disillusioned with the political environment and turns into a renegade (wet rogue agent WRA). The plot thickens when he attempts to murder a governor who is campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. Like the two earlier books in the trilogy, this one deals with a potpourri of unlikely characters who are drawn together by ironies and individual agendas.

The Pro Patria Project (for ones country) is the sequel to the authors The ProCon Conspiracy. It involves a dozen powerful men six each from the federal and private sectors who hatch a plot to assassinate a dozen of the nations most prominent citizens. Believing these men are undermining the countrys morals and values, the Committee of Twelve consists of the National Security Advisor, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Secretary of Defense, Directors of the CIA and FBI, and a U. S. Congressman. Pardoned men from the defunct ProCon Conspiracy are recruited by the Committee to plan and execute the plot. General Henry Mullaire and Colonel Manfred West, co-conspirators during the ProCon debacle, manage an intriguing scheme that uses desperate men to carry out the ruthless murders. No witnesses remain at the end; no stone is left unturned. pThe third book in the trilogy, The Bane of Cinco de Mayo, will follow later this year.