A father (Tom) hears his son Richard say, "school is ok except I don't like learning numbers or arithmetic." After dinner Tom sits with Richard and tells him a story of a kingdom long ago where the use of numbers is forbidden by King Kcaj and of the chaos that ensues because of it. As Tom's story unfolds he hopes to instill in Richard a sense of the importance of learning numbers, counting and arithmetic along with other life lessons.

What started out as letters of reminisce between two mining partners resulted in the writing of this book. I thought I might share my experiences with others who may never have the opportunity to commercially mine for gold. Unfortunately gold mining is not limited to cleaning out sluice boxes. Of more importance is getting gold into the sluice box. Arriving at the time when you can clean out the sluice box is preceded by many experiences with the local people and the mining crew members.

There is a small planet some 150 trillion miles from Earth and if someone on Earth sends a message to this planet at approximately 40,000 miles per hour, it will take 500,000 years to deliver it. For all of the obvious reasons, including one that the sender doesn't even know for sure the planet is there; there will not be a lot of communication taking place. But in the loosest of terms communication is possible, but it requires a sender who will be extinct hundreds of thousands of years before the message is delivered, doesn't know who they are sending it to, and a recipient who has no idea a...

If you were to meet three young Irish immigrants getting off a ship in New York harbor in the year 1864, you could not even hazard a guess as to their future in America. But, if you were to meet three young Irish men in the gold fields of California in 1866, their arriving there could be reduced to a very few possibilities. Their experiences getting there could vary from any other three Irish brothers accomplishing the same thing, but either trio of brothers would have experienced similar adventures along the way. Although the three brothers in this story are fictional characters, it is...

During the spring of 1918 on the Western Front, an accident occurred involving a large reconnaissance balloon with its two forward observers. The accident resulted in the large balloon breaking free from its mooring and was adrift to the east over German held territory. The accident was no fault of the observers, but for several reasons the U.S. Army declared that the observers were deserters. The story Balloonatics is about these two observers and their fate due to being set adrift over hostile territory as well as being wanted by the allies for desertion. They were in the precarious...