Download or read book Enduring Courage Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed written by John F. Ross and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sensational true story of Eddie Rickenbacker, America's greatest flying ace At the turn of the twentieth century two new technologies—the car and airplane—took the nation's imagination by storm as they burst, like comets, into American life. The brave souls that leaped into these dangerous contraptions and pushed them to unexplored extremes became new American heroes: the race car driver and the flying ace. No individual did more to create and intensify these raw new roles than the tall, gangly Eddie Rickenbacker, who defied death over and over with such courage and pluck that a generation of Americans came to know his face better than the president's. The son of poor, German-speaking Swiss immigrants in Columbus, Ohio, Rickenbacker overcame the specter of his father's violent death, a debilitating handicap, and, later, accusations of being a German spy, to become the American military ace of aces in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient. He and his high-spirited, all-too-short-lived pilot comrades, created a new kind of aviation warfare, as they pushed their machines to the edge of destruction—and often over it—without parachutes, radios, or radar. Enduring Courage is the electrifying story of the beginning of America's love affair with speed—and how one man above all the rest showed a nation the way forward. No simple daredevil, he was an innovator on the racetrack, a skilled aerial dualist and squadron commander, and founder of Eastern Air Lines. Decades after his heroics against the Red Baron's Flying Circus, he again showed a war-weary nation what it took to survive against nearly insurmountable odds when he and seven others endured a harrowing three-week ordeal adrift without food or water in the Pacific during World War II. For the first time, Enduring Courage peels back the layers of hero to reveal the man himself. With impeccable research and a gripping narrative, John F. Ross tells the unforgettable story of a man who pushed the limits of speed, endurance and courage and emerged as an American legend.

Download or read book Eddie Rickenbacker written by W. David Lewis and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2005-12-08 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Lewis has written the definitive biography of America's ace of aces.

Download or read book The Age of Speed written by Vince Poscente and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To succeed in today’s ever-accelerating world, speed is the name of the game. Forget “slow and steady wins the race.” The key to getting ahead is not fighting or hiding from speed, but embracing speed and using its power to your advantage. As Vince Poscente demonstrates in this rewarding and, yes, fast-paced book, speed has a unique ability to enrich your life. He empowers you to take control of your time, your tasks, your priorities, and your talents, and start making life everything you want it to be. Twenty new tips–exclusive to this paperback edition–show you how to: • recognize the difference between repetitive chores and passionate pursuits, and assign the appropriate amount of time and energy to each • mentally shatter the outdated idea that work, home, and leisure should be completely separate, and create a new, purpose-driven model of organizing your time • discover how to control interruptions, including how and when to accept them–by learning when to multitask and when to focus Speed provides amazing benefits–you become more conscious of how you spend your time, understand your authentic purpose, and find yourself more flexible and open to new opportunities. When you harness the power of speed, your life and work become less stressful, less busy, and more balanced. What are you waiting for? Praise for The Age of Speed: “The Age of Speed is your bible to surf the speed tsunami that’s overtaking business and life.” –Scott Cook, chairman and co-founder, Intuit “Thought-provoking . . . It’s time to make peace with the whoosh of your 24/7 lifestyle.” –Time “[Vince Poscente’s] counterintuitive notion of embracing speed rather than coping with it will change the way people live and work.” –Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust

Download or read book Fighting the Flying Circus written by Eddie Rickenbacker and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow written by John M. Curatola and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Right after World War II, the United States felt secure in its atomic monopoly. With the American "Pax Atomica" in place, the free world held an apparent strategic advantage over the Soviet bloc and saw itself as a bulwark against communist expansion. But America's atomic superiority in the early postwar years was more fiction than fact. From 1945 until 1950, the U.S. atomic arsenal was poorly coordinated, equipped and funded. The newly formed Atomic Energy Commission inherited from the Manhattan Engineer District a program suffering from poor organization, failing infrastructure and internal conflict. The military establishment and the Air Force's Strategic Air Command little knew what to do with this new weapon. The Air Force and the AEC failed to coordinate their efforts for a possible atomic air offensive and war plans were ill-conceived, reflecting unrealistic expectations of Air Force capabilities and possible political outcomes. This lack of preparedness serves as a case study in the tenuous nature of American civilian-military relationships. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Download or read book War on the Run written by John F. Ross and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often hailed as the godfather of today’s elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on “impossible” missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers’ legend. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Rogers learned to survive in New England’s dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. John F. Ross not only re-creates Rogers’s life and his spectacular battles with breathtaking immediacy and meticulous accuracy, but brings a new and provocative perspective on Rogers’s unique vision of a unified continent, one that would influence Thomas Jefferson and inspire the Lewis and Clark expedition. Rogers’s principles of unconventional war-making would lay the groundwork for the colonial strategy later used in the War of Independence—and prove so compelling that army rangers still study them today. Robert Rogers, a backwoods founding father, was heroic, admirable, brutal, canny, ambitious, duplicitous, visionary, and much more—like America itself.

Download or read book Unbroken written by Laura Hillenbrand and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Download or read book The Promise of the Grand Canyon written by John F. Ross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A convincing case for Powell’s legacy as a pioneering conservationist.”--The Wall Street Journal "A bold study of an eco-visionary at a watershed moment in US history."--Nature A timely, thrilling account of the explorer who dared to lead the first successful expedition down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon—and waged a bitterly-contested campaign for sustainability in the West. John Wesley Powell’s first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 counts among the most dramatic chapters in American exploration history. When the Canyon spit out the surviving members of the expedition—starving, battered, and nearly naked—they had accomplished what others thought impossible and finished the exploration of continental America that Lewis and Clark had begun almost 70 years before. With The Promise of the Grand Canyon, John F. Ross tells how that perilous expedition launched the one-armed Civil War hero on the path to becoming the nation’s foremost proponent of environmental sustainability and a powerful, if controversial, visionary for the development of the American West. So much of what he preached—most broadly about land and water stewardship—remains prophetically to the point today.

Download or read book Tiger Trap written by David Wise and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A stunningly detailed history . . . from sexy socialite double agents to ‘kill switches’ implanted offshore in the computer chips for our electric grid” (R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence). For decades, while America obsessed over Soviet spies, China quietly penetrated the highest levels of government. Now, for the first time, based on numerous interviews with key insiders at the FBI and CIA as well as with Chinese agents and people close to them, David Wise tells the full story of China’s many victories and defeats in its American spy wars. Two key cases interweave throughout: Katrina Leung, code-named Parlor Maid, worked for the FBI for years even after she became a secret double agent for China, aided by love affairs with both of her FBI handlers. Here, too, is the inside story of the case, code-named Tiger Trap, of a key Chinese-American scientist suspected of stealing nuclear weapons secrets. These two cases led to many others, involving famous names from Wen Ho Lee to Richard Nixon, stunning national security leaks, sophisticated cyberspying, and a West Coast spy ring whose members were sentenced in 2010. As concerns swirl about US-China relations and the challenges faced by our intelligence community, Tiger Trap provides an important overview from “America’s premier writer on espionage” (The Washington Post Book World). “Wise’s conclusion is sobering—China’s spying on America is ongoing, current, and shows no signs of diminishing—and his book is a fascinating history of Chinese espionage.” —Publishers Weekly “A fact-filled inside account, with sources named and no one spared.” —Seymour M. Hersh

Download or read book Brave Men written by Ernie Pyle and published by Michael O'Mara Books. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brave Men is Ernie Pyle's gripping account of life on the European front-line during World War II.

Download or read book The Onion Book of Known Knowledge written by The Onion and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you a witless cretin with no reason to live? Would you like to know more about every piece of knowledge ever? Do you have cash? Then congratulations, because just in time for the death of the print industry as we know it comes the final book ever published, and the only one you will ever need: The Onion's compendium of all things known. Replete with an astonishing assemblage of facts, illustrations, maps, charts, threats, blood, and additional fees to edify even the most simple-minded book-buyer, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge is packed with valuable information -- such as the life stages of an Aunt; places to kill one's self in Utica, New York; and the dimensions of a female bucket, or "pail." With hundreds of entries for all 27 letters of the alphabet, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge must be purchased immediately to avoid the sting of eternal ignorance.

Download or read book Lost at Sea written by John Wukovits and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forgotten story of American war hero Eddie Rickenbacker's crash landing in the Pacific during World War II, and his incredible twenty-three-day crusade to keep his crew alive In the darkest days of World War II, an unlikely civilian was sent to deliver a letter from Washington to General MacArthur in New Guinea. Eddie Rickenbacker was a genuine icon, a pioneer of aviation, the greatest fighter pilot of the First World War, recipient of the Medal of Honor, who’d retired to become a renowned race car driver. Now in his fifties, one of the most admired men in America, Rickenbacker was again serving his nation, riding high above the Pacific as a passenger aboard a B-17. But soon the plane was forced to crash-land on the ocean surface, leaving its eight occupants adrift in tiny rubber life rafts, hundreds of miles from the nearest speck of land. Lacking fresh water and with precious little food, the men faced days of unrelenting sun, followed by nights shivering in the cold, fighting pangs of hunger, exhaustion, and thirst, all the while circled by sharks. Each prayed to see a friendly vessel on the horizon, and dreaded the arrival of a Japanese warship. Meanwhile, as the US Navy scoured the South Pacific, American radio and newspapers back home parsed every detail of Rickenbacker's disappearance, and an adoring public awaited news of his fate. Using survivors’ accounts and contemporary records, award-winning author John Wukovits brings to life a gripping story of survival, leadership, and faith in a time of crisis.

Download or read book Air Force and Space Digest written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Many Lives of Eddie Rickenbacker written by Andrew Speno and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life story of a daredevil who became a war hero will fascinate adventurous young readers with its tales of survival. At age thirteen, following the death of his father, young Eddie dropped out of school and joined the workforce. Through a combination of smarts, hard work, and perseverance, Rickenbacker would grow up to become an automobile mechanic, a race car driver, a fighter pilot, an entrepreneur, a war hero, a business executive, and a staunch advocate for hard work and personal responsibility. Along the way he lived on the line between recklessness and courage. He survived dozens of accidents, coming close to death more than once. During the earliest years of American automobile racing, Rickenbacker was “the most daring and withal the most cautious driver” on the circuit. How could he have been both daring and cautious? This book invites young readers to decide for themselves as they follow Rickenbacker on his many hair-raising adventures.

Download or read book Indianapolis Motor Speedway the Eddie Rickenbacker Era written by Denny Miller and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2020-12-20 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Eddie Rickenbacker Era book is first and foremost an in-depth look of his ownership of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from 1927-1945 and not intended to be another biography of Rickenbacker’s life. A list of books of Eddie’s military life or his ordeal about being lost 23 days in the South Pacific, which I highly recommend reading, follows. Throughout the book, I listed key dates and headlines in United States history, in politics, sports and entertainment, that is intended to serve as a point-of-reference timeline throughout the Eddie Rickenbacker Era. Don’t cringe on certain typos—I purposely capitalize the “R” in Race in various places as my way of showing reverence to the Indianapolis 500. Other grammar and punctuation irregularities are my humorous middle finger to those former “composition 101” profs who used so much red ink correcting my themes.

Download or read book Mrs Witherspoon Goes to War written by Mary Davis and published by Barbour Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A WASP Goes Above the Call of Duty to Free Captive American Soldiers Full of intrigue, adventure, and romance, this new series celebrates the unsung heroes—the heroines of WWII. Peggy Witherspoon, a widow, mother, and pilot flying for the Women’s Airforce Service in 1944 clashes with her new reporting officer. Army Air Corp Major Howie Berg was injured in combat and is now stationed at Bolling Field in Washington D.C. Most of Peggy’s jobs are safe, predictable, and she can be home each night with her three daughters—until a cargo run to Cuba alerts her to American soldiers being held captive there, despite Cuba being an “ally.” Will Peggy go against orders to help the men—even risk her own life? ​Don’t miss these other stories about Heroines of WWII: The Cryptographer’s Dilemma by Johnnie Alexander Picture of Hope by Liz Tolsma Saving Mrs. Roosevelt by Candice Sue Patterson

Download or read book Of Arms and Men written by Robert L. O'Connell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-04-19 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appearance of the crossbow on the European battle field in A.D. 1100 as the weapon of choice for shooting down knights threatened the status quo of medieval chivalric fighting techniques. By 1139 the Church had intervened, outlawing the use of the crossbow among Christians. With this edict, arms control was born. As Robert L. O'Connell reveals in this vividly written history of weapons in Western culture, that first attempt at an arms control measure characterizes the complex and often paradoxical relationship between men and arms throughout the centuries. In a sweeping narrative that ranges from prehistoric times to the nuclear age, O'Connell demonstrates how social and economic conditions determine the types of weapons and the tactics used in warfare and how, in turn, innovations in weapons technology often undercut social values. He describes, for instance, how the invention of the gun required a redefinition of courage from aggressive ferocity to calmness under fire; and how the machine gun in World War I so overthrew traditional notions of combat that Lord Kitchener exclaimed, "This isn't war!" The technology unleashed during the Great War radically altered our perceptions of ourselves, as these new weapons made human qualities almost irrelevant in combat. With the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity itself became subservient to the weapons it had produced. Of Arms and Men brilliantly integrates the evolution of politics, weapons, strategy, and tactics into a coherent narrative, one spiced with striking portraits of men in combat and penetrating insights into why men go to war.