Active Service, with eBook

American author Stephen Crane (1871-1900) won international fame with The Red Badge of Courage, which was acclaimed as the first modern war novel. Crane's works introduced realism into American literature, but his innovative technique and use of symbolism gave much of his best work a romantic rather than a naturalistic quality. Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1871, the fourteenth child of a Methodist minister. He started to write stories at the age of eight, and at sixteen he was writing articles for the New York Tribune. Crane studied at Lafayette College and Syracuse University, then moved to New York, where he lived a bohemian life and worked as a freelance writer and journalist. While Crane supported himself by writing, he lived among the poor in the Bowery slums to research his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Later, he became a war correspondent and traveled to Greece, Cuba, Texas, and Mexico to report on war events. His short story "The Open Boat" is based on his personal experience aboard a ship that sank en route to Cuba in 1896. Crane spent several days drifting in an open boat with a few other passengers before being rescued. Unfortunately, this experience permanently impaired his health. In 1898, Crane settled in Sussex, England, where he lived with an author and the proprietress of a well-known brothel. In 1899, while in Greece, Crane wrote Active Service, which was based on the Greco-Turkish War. He then returned to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War. However, shortly thereafter, the tuberculosis and malarial fever that he contracted during his Cuban shipwreck experience overcame him. Crane died on June 5, 1900, at the age of twenty-nine in Badenweiler, Germany.

John Bolen brings his extensive theater, film, and television experience to audiobooks. Recent television appearances include CIA: Masters of Deception on the Discovery Channel and Courage on the Fox Family Channel. His recent film work includes The Land, The Inn Outside the World, Dream Parlor, and the American Film Institute's Women Directors Workshop short This Is Bill. John has performed at many theaters in the Los Angeles area. He portrayed Sir David Metcalfe in Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Jim in Later Life. He was featured as Dr. Montague in The Haunting of Hill House, Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr. Meeker in Inherit the Wind, Henri and the shore patrolman in South Pacific, and Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet. He starred as Palmer Forrester in Murder Among Friends and Dr. Gerald Lyman in Bus Stop. John has also performed in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Tribunal, A Dickens of a Christmas, Once Upon a Mattress, Fiddler on the Roof, and Finian's Rainbow. He performs in an ongoing school touring production of Billy's Closet. He is also a playwright and a member of the New Voices Playwrights Theatre. John and his wife, Lynne, live in Irvine, California.