Finding Billy Battles: An Account of Peril, Transgression and Redemption

Yates, Ronald E

ISBN 10: 1493130315 / ISBN 13: 9781493130313

Published by Xlibris, 2013

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781493130313

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Finding Billy Battles: An Account of Peril, Transgression and Redemption
• Publisher: Xlibris
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1493130315
• ISBN 13: 9781493130313
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

When a great-grandson inherits two aging trunks and a stackof meticulously detailed journals penned by his great-grandfather, he sets outto fulfill his great-grandfather's last request: to tell the story of anincredible life replete with adventure, violence, and tragedy. Thegreat-grandfather's name is Billy Battles--a man often trapped and overwhelmedby circumstances beyond his control.

For much of his 100-year-long life Billy is a man missingand largely unknown to his descendants. His great-grandson is about to changethat. As he works his way through the aging journals and the other possessions hefinds in the battered trunks he uncovers the truth about his mysteriousgreat-grandfather--a man whose deeds and misdeeds propelled him on an extraordinaryand perilous journey from the untamed American West to the inscrutable FarEast, Latin America and Europe.

As he flips through the pages of the handwritten journals pennedby his great-grandfather, he learns of Billy's surprising connections to theSpanish-American War, French Indochina, and revolutions in Mexico and otherLatin American countries. But most of all he learns that in finding BillyBattles he has also found a long lost and astonishing link to the past.

About the Author

Ronald E. Yates is a former award-winning foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and Dean Emeritus of the College of Media at the University of Illinois where he was also a Professor of Journalism.
 
He is the author of Finding Billy Battles, the first in a trilogy of novels published Nov. 2013 and The Kikkoman Chronicles: A Global Company with A Japanese Soul, published by McGraw-Hill. His books also include Aboard The Tokyo Express: A Foreign Correspondent's Journey Through Japan, a collection of columns translated into Japanese, as well as three journalism textbooks: The Journalist's Handbook, International Reporting and Foreign Correspondents, and Business and Financial Reporting in a Global Economy.
 
Yates lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in Japan, Southeast Asia and Latin America where he covered several major stories including the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975, the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy in Beijing, and revolutions in Nicaragua, El Salvador an Guatemala. He is a graduate of the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.