Oliver was born in the aftermath of the First World War; he grew up on a large estate learning the skills of poachers, fieldcraft, shooting and an instinct for navigation. From an idyllic life he was sucked into the Second World War; he joined the army where he was given a commission. He had no idea that his future was to involve high adventure, combined with a bevy of female admirers who were to affect his life.Formal soldiering did not sit well with him so the army focused his destiny. He trained as a commando. Posted to Egypt, the Long Range Desert Group sought his military and linguistic skills; he soon found himself deep behind the enemy lines gathering intelligence. Then he was transferred to the Special Air Service, where he took part in behind-the-lines raids against enemy targets in North Africa. As the war in the desert drew to a close, he returned to England to prepare for the invasion of Europe. He led a four-man SAS team who were dropped into occupied France. Their mission was to blow up railway lines and trains at the market town of Le Dorat in south-west France, so as to delay the German army's hasty move north to counter the D-Day landings.

It seems that everywhere twelve-year-old Oliver Kovak turns, there's a battle to be won - or lost. When his father, a nurse, is assigned to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, Oliver, his mom, and his twin brother, Jerry, move East to live his grandparents. There, not only must he learn to get a long with his grouchy grandfather, but he must cope with the cruel put-downs of a gym teacher and the taunts of new schoolmates. But his biggest "war" is a personal one - Oliver, who always looks as if nothing bothers him, must learn to let people know when he is hurting...

In the early 1900s, William Rockefeller of Standard Oil, one of the world's wealthiest, most powerful businessmen, decided to purchase a vast estate in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State. The land he wanted consisted of traditional hunting and fishing grounds vital to settlers who had lived in the mountains for generations. He purchased more than 50,000 acres and allowed no trespassing on his property.To complete his estate, Rockefeller needed to remove the village of Brandon, which stood in his way. Most of the residents left or were coerced by Rockefeller into leaving. A variety of aggressive, onerous tactic were used to drive the people of Brandon from their homes.A diminutive lumberjack named Oliver Lamora resisted, and for a decade the two men battled in the forest and in the courts of New York State. The confrontation grew into a fight for control of the Adirondacks, and was followed by newspapers from coast to coast. Threats, violence, arson, and murder all played a role in the struggle. It pitted wealthy outsiders against poor mountain natives, and the two main protagonists, Rockefeller and Lamora, were portrayed as a modern-day version of David and Goliath. This is the uplifting, true story of a pioneer woodsman's heroic battle against incredible odds.

Oliver's grandfather tells him the story of how he almost joined the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

One difficulty in writing a balanced history of the American Revolution arises in part from its success as a creator of our nation and our nationalistic sentiment. Unlike the Civil War, unlike the French Revolution, the American Revolution produced no lingering social trauma in the United States—it is a historic event widely applauded by Americans today as both necessary and desirable. But one consequence of this happy unanimity is that the chief losers of the War of Independence—the American Loyalists—have fared badly at the hands of historians. This explains, in part, why the account of the Revolution recorded by self-professed Loyalist and Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, Peter Oliver, has heretofore been so routinely overlooked. Oliver's manuscript, entitled "The Origins & Progress of the American Rebellion," written in 1781, challenges the motives of the founding fathers, and depicts the revolution as passion, plotting, and violence. His descriptions of the leaders of the patriot party, of their program and motives, are unforgiving, bitter, and inevitably partisan. But it records the impressions of one who had experienced these events, knew most of the combatants intimately, and saw the collapse of the society he had lived in. His history is a very important contemporary account of the origins of the revolution in Massachusetts, and is now presented here in it entirety for the first time.