Book picks similar to
The Untouchables: Mission Accomplished by Brian Shul
history
nonfiction
flight
aviation
Jet Age Man: SAC B-47 and B-52 Operations in the Early Cold War
Earl J. McGill - 2011
To some, nuclear deterrence appeared as utter madness, and was in fact commonly referred to as M.A.D. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction provoked protests and marches, and the architect of M.A.D, General Curtis LeMay, became a symbol of madness himself.
Eleanor Roosevelt's Life of Soul Searching and Self Discovery: From Depression and Betrayal to First Lady of the World
Ann Atkins - 2011
Refusing to cave in to society's rules, Eleanor's exuberant style, wavering voice and lack of Hollywood beauty are fodder for the media.First Lady for thirteen years, Eleanor redefines and exploits this role to a position ofpower. Using her influence she champions for Jews, African Americans and women. Living through two world wars Eleanor witnesses thousands of graves, broken bodies and grieving families. After visiting troops in the Pacific she says:"If we don't make this a more decent world to live in I don't see how we can look these boys in the eyes."She defies a post-war return to status quo and establishes the Universal Declarationof Human Rights within the U.N. She earns her way to being named "First Lady of the World." The audacity of this woman to live out her own destiny challenges us to do the same. After all, it's not about Eleanor. Her story is history. It's about us.
Cascade Summer: My Adventure on Oregon's Pacific Crest Trail
Bob Welch - 2012
To reconnect with his past. And to better understand the 19th-century Cascade Range advocate John Waldo, the state's answer to California's naturalist John Muir. Despite great expectations, near trails end Welch finds himself facing an unlikely challenge. Laughs. Blisters. And new friends from literally around the world-his PCT adventure offered it all. But he never foresaw the bittersweet ending.
The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera
Joseph Volpe - 2006
This book is the story of Volpe's years leading up to those at the Met, from his first job as a stagehand at the Morosco Theater to the odd jobs he picked up moonlighting: setting up a searchlight or laying down a red carpet for a movie premiere, changing titles on the marquees at the Astor, Victor, and Paramount theaters. It is his Met years--from apprentice carpenter to general manager--that give us a story about New York and the business of culture. Volpe looks at the Met today, an institution full of vast egos and complicated politics, as well as its glittering past--the old Met at Thirty-ninth and Broadway, and the political and artistic intrigues that exploded around its move to Lincoln Center. With stunning candor, he writes about the general managers he worked under, including Rudolf Bing and Anthony Bliss; his own embattled rise to the top; the maneuverings of the blue-chip board; his bad-cop, good-cop collaboration with the conductor James Levine; and his masterful approach to making a family of such highly charged artist-stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, and Renee Fleming, and such visionary directors as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Wilson, and Julie Taymor.
Ronald Reagan: 100 Years: Official Centennial Edition from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation
Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation - 2011
Featuring archival photographs of the Reagan family along with insightful text, this book is the ultimate commemorative edition to mark the one hundredth anniversary of President Reagan’s birth. It offers an intimate, insider’s glimpse of the life and legacy of America’s most beloved leader.
On Full Automatic: Surviving 13 Months in Vietnam
William V. Taylor Jr. - 2021
Taylor Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real, but entirely surreal nightmare. Now after more than fifty years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit and often horrific detail and with a reverent honor for those Marines who did not live to tell the tale.Taylor reveals what it truly means to walk the path of a warrior, to sacrifice, and to live a lifetime with the memories of a war—seeking answers to the question, “Was it worth it?"
John F. Kennedy: A Life
New Word City - 2012
Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of public and cultural fascination (a film by Oliver Stone, a novel by Stephen King, endless conspiracy theories) for nearly 50 years. It’s time, this brief biography argues, to give equal consideration to Kennedy’s life.
The Fire She Set
Leigh Overton Boyd - 2020
They did not talk about their mom's extended absences or why their dad put Scotch tape on the backdoor frame. To cover up the chaos, they kept their clothes neat and got good grades. But when they were teenagers, an arson fire destroyed their home and killed their parents. Rumors were thick that summer that smart, angry, fourteen-year-old Lisa set the blaze. Then, adult powers they did not understand squelched the investigation. As teenagers accustomed to keeping silent, they packed up and moved on.Forty years later, Leigh, the oldest, decided it was time to find out who killed their parents. She obtained copies of the police and fire investigations and began unwrapping the past. This memoir is the story of that investigation as Leigh tried to piece together the truth, but found more lies instead. With the help of her sisters, Leigh was able to reconstruct much of what happened to them in the beach towns around Atlantic City in the early 1970s. After the fire, one sister turned to heroin and another to alcohol; Leigh became Miss Atlantic City. Then, one by one, they each moved to California and shut the door on their past, even though they privately wondered whether one of them killed Frank and Nancy Overton. It's funny. They never wondered whether one of their parents was trying to kill them.
Hoover's FBI
Cartha Deloach - 1995
Edgar Hoover, DeLoach--the number three man in the FBI throughout the tumultuous '60s--has written a precise, highly readable narrative that should set the record straight once and for all. Photos.
Law Man: Memoir of a Jailhouse Lawyer
Shon Hopwood - 2017
Those who knew him well would never have imagined that, as a young man, he’d be adrift with few prospects and plotting to rob a bank. But he did, committing five armed bank robberies before being apprehended. Serving ten years in federal prison, Shon feared his life was over. He wasn’t sure if he could survive a cell block, but he was determined to try. Hopwood pumped-up in the prison gym to defend himself and earned respect on the basketball court. He reconnected with the girl of his dreams from high school through letters and prison visits; and, crucially, he talked his way into a job in the prison law library. Hopwood slowly taught himself criminal law and began to help fellow inmates rather than himself. He wrote one petition to the Supreme Court, which was chosen to be heard from over 7,000 other petitions submitted by the greater legal community that year. The Justices voted 9-0 in favor of Hopwood’s petition when the case was finally heard. What might have been considered luck by some, was dispelled when a second petition from him was selected to be heard by the Supreme Court. He didn’t grasp it yet, but Shon’s legal work was the start of a new life. Shon works on policy reform, and he is a cofounder of PrisonProfessors.com. He strives to improve outcomes of America’s prison system, and he tells his amazing story in Law Man.
Fate Is the Hunter
Ernest K. Gann - 1961
Gann’s classic pilot's memoir is an up-close and thrilling account of the treacherous early days of commercial aviation. “Few writers have ever drawn readers so intimately into the shielded sanctum of the cockpit, and it is hear that Mr. Gann is truly the artist” (The New York Times Book Review).“A splendid and many-faceted personal memoir that is not only one man’s story but the story, in essence, of all men who fly” (Chicago Tribune). In his inimitable style, Gann brings you right into the cockpit, recounting both the triumphs and terrors of pilots who flew when flying was anything but routine.
Eye of the Tiger: Memoir of a United States Marine, Third Force Recon Company, Vietnam
John Edmund Delezen - 2003
John Edmund Delezen felt a kinship with the people he was instructed to kill in Vietnam; they were all at the mercy of the land. His memoir begins when he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was sent to Vietnam in March of 1967. He volunteered for the Third Force Recon Company, whose job it was to locate and infiltrate enemy lines undetected and map their locations and learn details of their status. The duty was often painful both physically and mentally. He was stricken with malaria in November of 1967, wounded by a grenade in February of 1968 and hit by a bullet later that summer. He remained in Vietnam until December, 1968. Delezen writes of Vietnam as a man humbled by a mysterious country and horrified by acts of brutality. The land was his enemy as much as the Vietnamese soldiers. He vividly describes the three-canopy jungle with birds and monkeys overhead that could be heard but not seen, venomous snakes hiding in trees and relentless bugs that fed on men. He recalls stumbling onto a pit of rotting Vietnamese bodies left behind by American forces, and days when fierce hunger made a bag of plasma seem like an enticing meal. He writes of his fallen comrades and the images of war that still pervade his dreams. This book contains many photographs of American Marines and Vietnam as well as three maps.
I Was Hitler's Pilot: The Memoirs of Hans Baur
Hans Baur - 2013
Hitler, who loathed flying, felt safe with Baur and would allow no one else to pilot him. As a result, an intimate relationship developed between the two men and it is this, which gives these memoirs special significance. Hitler relaxed in Baur's company and talked freely of his plans and of his real opinions about his friends and allies.Baur was also present during some of the most salient moments of the Third Reich; the R�hm Putsch, the advent of Eva Braun, Ribbentrop's journey to Moscow, the B�rgerbr�ukeller attempt on Hitler's life; and when war came, he flew Hitler from front to front. He remained in Hitler's service right up to the final days in the F�hrerbunker. In a powerful account of Hitler's last hours, Baur describes his final discussions with Hitler before his suicide; and his last meeting with Magda Goebbels in the tortuous moments before she killed her three children. Remarkably, throughout it all Baur's loyalty to the F�hrer never wavered. His memoirs capture these events in all their fascinating and disturbing detail.
Pioneer life; or, Thirty Years a Hunter, Being Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Philip Tome (1854)
Philip Tome - 2006
Tome was born in 1782 near present-day Harrisburg and lived on the upper Susquehanna for much of his life. He tells colorful (and mostly true) tales about his hunting exploits in the Pennsylvania wilderness, as he tracked elk, wolves, bears, panthers, foxes, and other large animals through the state’s north-central mountains, earning wide renown among his contemporaries. His stories contain suspenseful chase scenes, accidents, and narrow escapes, inviting the reader to view a still-wild Pennsylvania through the eyes of one who “was never conquered by man or animal.” Pioneer Life, originally published in 1854, has since been reprinted several times. This classic hunting memoir includes the following chapters: I. Birth and Early Life II. Hunting the Elk III. Capturing a Live Elk IV. Face of the Country V. Face of the Country — Continued VI. Danger From Rattlesnakes VII. Wolf and Bear Hunting VIII. Another Elk Hunt IX. Elk-Hunting on the Susquehannah X. Elk-Hunting — Continued XI. Nature, Habits, and Manner of Hunting the Elk XII. Elk and Bear Hunting in Winter XIII. Hunting on the Clarion River XIV. Hunting and Trapping XV. The Bear, Its Nature and Habits XVI. Hunting Deer at Different Seasons XVII. Nature and Habits of the Panther, Wolf and Fox XVIII. Rattlesnakes and Their Habits XIX. Distinguished Lumbermen, Etc. XX.. Reminiscences of Cornplanter XXI. Indian Eloquence This book originally published in 1854 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting
Courting Justice: From NY Yankees v. Major League Baseball to Bush v. Gore, 1997-2000
David Boies - 2004
16 pages of photos.