Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin


Francis Spufford - 2003
    Starting with this forgotten episode, 'Backroom Boys' tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars. 'Backroom Boys' is a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code. Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender means.

Test Of Greatness: Britain’s Struggle for the Atom Bomb


Brian Cathcart - 2016
     He ordered a superhuman effort to make Britain a nuclear power. Although Britain had been a junior partner in the Manhattan Project which had produced the American bombs, no British scientist had more than partial knowledge of the complex physics involved. The war over, the Americans cut off all help. At a time of daunting economic difficulty and amid the growing tension of the Cold War, the project hurriedly took shape behind a cloak of almost paranoid secrecy and in an atmosphere of constant stringency and shortage. Brian Cathcart’s book ranges over politics, diplomacy, espionage and science, but above all it tells the story of the brilliant young scientist William Penney, his team and their struggle. The men who worked behind the security fences at Aldermaston have been allowed to speak. The tales include fearsome risks, vast resourcefulness, bureaucratic obstruction, naval intransigence and a measure of black humour. The veil is also lifted on the extraordinary contribution of Klaus Fuchs, the Soviet spy. Finally the high drama of the test itself, conducted off the coast of Australia after a naval operation which came close to total fiasco, is recounted in gripping detail. Test of Greatness draws on what at the time the book was published were newly declassified documents. Cathcart also speaks uses primary sources, such as the words of the participants, illustrating and illuminating in vivid, human terms a secret but crucial chapter of post-war British history. Praise for Brian Cathcart: ‘The story of the British bomb mixes science, politics, espionage, Essex and morality. A nation is changed for ever when it decides to become a nuclear power. Brian Cathcart takes this complicated array of factors and makes them rise out of the page and walk to a very wide audience.’ – Sir Peter Hennessy, military historian Brian Cathcart was Assistant Editor of the Independent on Sunday when he wrote Test of Greatness. Since then he has taken up a position at Kingston University London and founded Hacked Off in the aftermath of the tabloid phone-hacking scandal. He has just published his eighth book, The News from Waterloo. His previous works include accounts of the murders of Jill Dando and Stephen Lawrence.

MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exams 70-290, 70-291, 70-293, 70-294): Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Core Requirements


Dan HolmeMelissa Craft - 2003
    Maybe you re going for MCSA first, then MCSE. Maybe you need to upgrade your current credentials. Now, direct from Microsoft, this set brings together all the study resources you ll need. You get the brand-new Second Edition of all four books: for Exam 70-290 (Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server Environment), 70-291 and 70-293 (Network Infrastructure), and 70-294 (Active Directory). What s new here? Deeper coverage, more case studies, more troubleshooting, plus significant new coverage: Emergency Management Services, DNS, WSUS, Post-Setup Security Updates, traffic monitoring, Network Access Quarantine Control, and much more. There are more than 1,200 highly customizable CD-based practice questions. And, for those who don t have easy acess to Windows Server 2003, there s a 180-day eval version. This package isn t cheap, but there s help there, too: 15% discount coupons good toward all four exams. Bill Camarda, from the August 2006 href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/newslet... Only

A Death in East Berlin


Richard Wake - 2020
    

The Next Logical Step


Ben Bova - 1962
    But, logically, there would be times--

Ubuntu: The Beginner's Guide


Jonathan Moeller - 2011
     In the Guide, you'll learn how to: -Use the Ubuntu command line. -Manage users, groups, and file permissions. -Install software on a Ubuntu system, both from the command line and the GUI. -Configure network settings. -Use the vi editor to edit system configuration files. -Install and configure a Samba server for file sharing. -Install SSH for remote system control using public key/private key encryption. -Install a DHCP server for IP address management. -Install a LAMP server. -Install web applications like WordPress and Drupal. -Configure an FTP server. -Manage ebooks. -Convert digital media. -Manage and configure Unity, the default Ubuntu environment. -Manage and halt processes from the command line. -Set up both a VNC server and a client. -Enjoy games on Ubuntu. -And many other topics.

Hullo Russia, Goodbye England


Derek Robinson - 2008
    and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Piloting a Vulcan is an unforgettable experience: no other aircraft comes close to matching its all-round performance. And as bombers go, it's drop-dead gorgeous.But there's a catch. The Vulcan has only one role: to make a second strike. To act in retaliation for a Russian nuclear attack. Silk knows that knows that if he ever flies his Vulcan in anger, he'll be flying from a smoking wasteland, a Britain obliterated. But in the mad world of Mutually Assured Destruction, the Vulcan is the last--the only--deterrent.Derek Robinson returns with another rip-roaring, gung-ho R.A.F. adventure, one that exposes and confronts the brinkmanship and saber-rattling of the Cold War Era.

Cyberstrike: London


James Barrington - 2020
    7/7/2005: Ben Morgan, a cybersecurity specialist with the Metropolitan police, starts another day at work. It will be the last normal day he ever has.The Present: In Hong Kong, a crime overlord is offered a deal by shadowy agents from Beijing: his life for a new kind of operation in London. Morgan, now a part of an off the books cyber-terrorism prevention unit, must do everything to stop its spread.This is a new kind of war: different goals, tactics, rules, stakes. And Morgan is caught right in the centre... A pulse-pounding thriller rooted in reality, perfect for fans of Frederick Forsyth, Andy McNab and James Deegan.

OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review


John Siracusa - 2014
    Siracusa's overview, wrap-up, and critique of everything new in OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story


Jesse Kornbluth - 2020
    Kennedy ever loved. Follow their affair in this fictional diary of the woman murdered for asking too many questions after the JFK assassination.   John F. Kennedy said he needed sex every three days or he got a headache. In the White House, he never had a headache. Kennedy met Mary Pinchot in 1935, when he was eighteen and she was sixteen. Twenty years later, when she was living in Virginia and married to Cord Meyer, a high-ranking CIA official, she was Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s next-door neighbor. In 1962, she was an artist, divorced, living in Washington—and Kennedy’s first serious romance. Mary Pinchot Meyer was more than a bedmate. She was Kennedy’s beacon light: his sole female adviser, spending mornings in the Oval Office, and, at night, discussing issues. After the 1964 election, Kennedy said, he would divorce Jackie and marry her.   After the assassination, Mary didn’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and she shared that view, loudly and often, in Washington’s most elite circles. Her ex-husband urged her to be silent, but when the report of the Warren Commission was released, she was even more loudly critical. On October 10, 1964, two days before her forty-forth birthday, as she walked in Georgetown, a man shot her in the head and the heart. That night, Mary's best friend called her sister. “Mary had a diary,” she said. “Get it.”   The diary was filled with sketches, notes for paintings—and ten pages about an affair with an unnamed lover. Her sister burned it. In JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story, Jesse Kornbluth recreates the diary Mary might have written. Working from a timeline of Kennedy’s presidency and every documented account of their public relationship, he has written a high-octane thriller that tracks this secret, doomed romance—and invites readers to solve Mary’s murder.

Storming the Gap First Strike


Brad Smith - 2019
    Their mission: protect the bridges over the Fulda River in a desperate bid to halt the onslaught of Soviet Armor before it can strike west and bring the Western alliance to its knees.As the first volume of a series that tells one version of the war’s progress, First Strike can be enjoyed as a companion to the platoon-scale wargame or by casual readers as a close-up view of mechanized combat in a war that never was.“The M1’s round carved into the hull deck of the rear tank. A bright emerald glow filled the thermal sight. When, at last, it dissipated, the T-80 was nothing but a heap of smoldering steel. The remaining enemy tank was caught between the two dead T-80s. It pivoted left and right, but the thick woods on either side blocked its progress.”

America's Secret Submarine: An Insider's Account of the Cold War's Undercover Nuclear Sub


Lee Vyborny - 2015
    The U.S. Navy’s state-of-the-art NR-1 nuclear powered submersible was the Cold War’s most closely guarded - and revolutionary - secret. In 1966, after the U.S. almost lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Spain, Admiral Hyman Rickover - father of the nuclear navy - outmaneuvered Congress and steamed full speed ahead on his brainchild: a spy mission and deep ocean recovery submarine with a miniature nuclear reactor that could navigate the ocean floor for weeks at a time. But operating at such depths would also cut off the crew should rescue become necessary. Now, an original crew member revels the true story of America’s Secret Submarine - the triumphs and near disasters of the super-secret NR-1 are told through first person accounts by those who alternately suffered through, and exalted in, its construction and initial operation - and then dared go where no men had gone before.

A Bucket of Sunshine: Life on a Cold War Canberra Squadron


Mike Brooke - 2012
    Brooke uses many amusing overtones to tell his story of what was an extremely serious business when the world was standing on the brink of nuclear conflict. The English-Electric Canberra was a first generation, jet-powered light bomber manufactured in large numbers in the 1950s. The Canberra could fly at a higher altitude than any other bomber through the 1950s and due to its ability to evade early interceptors was a popular export product and served with many nations.

The Blue Effect (Cold War Book 3)


Harvey Black - 2014
    Although reinforcements continue to arrive in theatre from all the NATO member countries, the Allies are pushed back relentlessly. The Eastern Bloc armies throw fresh regiments into the fray, their intention to deliver the killing lunge deep into the West’s retreating armies.What are the options open to NATO? Can the West stem the disorderly retreat? Can they gather enough conventional forces to hold? Or will they need to resort to more deadly means?Follow the series of gripping events in ‘The Blue Effect’, the third instalment in Harvey Black’s Cold War trilogy.

Valkyrie: The North American Xb-70: The Usa's Ill-Fated Supersonic Heavy Bomber


Graham M. Simons - 2011
    . . [with] new information, photographs and first-hand accounts." --FlypastDuring the 1950s, plans were being drawn at North American Aviation in Southern California for an incredible Mach-3 strategic bomber. The concept was born as a result of General Curtis LeMay's desire for a heavy bomber with the weapon load and range of the subsonic B-52 and a top speed in excess of the supersonic medium bomber, the B-58 Hustler. However, in April 1961, Defense Secretary McNamara stopped the production go-ahead for the B-70 because of rapid cost escalation and the USSR's newfound ability to destroy aircraft at extremely high altitude using either missiles or the new Mig-25 fighter. Nevertheless, in 1963 plans for the production of three high-speed research aircraft were approved and construction proceeded. In September 1964 the first Valkyrie, now re-coded A/V-1, took to the air for the first time and in October went supersonic.This book is the most detailed description of the design, engineering and research that went into this astounding aircraft. It is full of unpublished details, photographs and firsthand accounts from those closely associated with the project. Although never put into full production, this giant six-engined aircraft became famous for its breakthrough technology, and the spectacular images captured on a fatal air-to-air photo shoot when an observing Starfighter collided with Valkyrie A/V-2 which crashed into the Mojave Desert."Well-illustrated with numerous diagrams and black and white photographs, the book provides an interesting insight into one of the so-called 'white elephant' projects of the 1960s." --Jets Monthly