Download or read book The Only Living Lady Parachutist written by Catherine Clarke and published by Idle Fancy Press. This book was released on with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haunted by her brother’s death, daredevil Lillian tests her courage by joining the Van Tassel balloon act with her sister Ruby. Together they risk their lives for fame and fortune by parachuting from smoke balloons throughout Australia, but the feisty Lillian struggles to choose between love and her perilous career. Determined to take control of the balloon circuit and provide for her children, Lillian travels to New Zealand only to clash with charlatans, showmen, and disgruntled crowds when her exhibitions fall short of their expectations. A cascade of betrayals and reconciliations culminate in one last-ditch ascent from which there is no turning back. Many years later, as Lillian relates her fanciful version of those events, she must find a deeper courage to reveal the truth about her past. Based on the real life of a strong and unconventional woman trying to make her name, Lillian’s story is too incredible to be left untold.
Download or read book A Leap from the Clouds written by Jerry Kuntz and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-07-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, circus aerialists collaborated with show balloonists to perform death-defying stunts, initially by suspending themselves from trapeze bars beneath a balloon, later by jumping from the balloons using fabric parachutes. By the 1890s, these performances became a worldwide craze, remaining in rural fairs and fetes for decades. Many of the original balloon-parachute pioneers went on to play key roles in the creation of airships, test flying the first gliders and airplanes. Based on extensive historical research, this unusual account explores how a nineteenth-century daredevil act united with the desire to achieve human flight. These performers' contributions did not come without a price: dozens, if not hundreds, of people died in horrifying events witnessed by thousands of spectators. This book chronicles the act that had no practical purpose other than entertainment, which eventually evolved into the development of the free-fall parachute pack--a key aviation need--and the foundation of a new activity known as skydiving.
Download or read book When the Achute Went Up written by Dolly Shepherd and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book No Eta written by Dick Fortenberry and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-07-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would anybody want to jump out of a perfectly good, functioning airplane? Ask any sport parachutist in the world that question and you may find a different answer every time. For Dick Fortenberry, his love of parachuting began long before he joined the US Army at age eighteen and attended jump school with the 77th Special Forces Group. In his fascinating memoir about his journey to eventually becoming one of the original members of the Golden Knights, Fortenberry describes the rigorous training that led up to his first jump and to receiving the coveted silver wings on his chest, the parachute patch on his hat, and Airborne on his shoulders. As Fortenberry chronicles the details of how he rapidly excelled in the sport of skydiving, he offers an exciting glimpse of what it was like to feel the wind in his hair, the adrenaline as he quickly approached the ground, and the fear when his parachute malfunctioned. No ETA: The Pioneering Days of Skydiving shares the intriguing personal story of one mans journey in the early days of sport parachuting that ultimately led to three world championships and an appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Download or read book Parachute Infantry written by David Webster and published by Dell. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Kenyon Webster’s memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionally charged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war. Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned just after his discharge, Webster gives a first hand account of life in E Company, 101st Airborne Division, crafting a memoir that resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel. From the beaches of Normandy to the blood-dimmed battlefields of Holland, here are acts of courage and cowardice, moments of irritating boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, and pitched urban warfare. Offering a remarkable snapshot of what it was like to enter Germany in the last days of World War II, Webster presents a vivid, varied cast of young paratroopers from all walks of life, and unforgettable glimpses of enemy soldiers and hapless civilians caught up in the melee. Parachute Infantry is at once harsh and moving, boisterous and tragic, and stands today as an unsurpassed chronicle of war—how men fight it, survive it, and remember it.
Download or read book Happy Moscow written by Andrey Platonov and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original Moscow Chestnova is a bold and glamorous girl, a beautiful parachutist who grew up with the Revolution. As an orphan, she knew tough times—but things are changing now. Comrade Stalin has proclaimed that “Life has become better! Life has become merrier!” and Moscow herself is poised to join the Soviet elite. But her ambitions are thwarted when a freak accident propels her flaming from the sky. A new, stranger life begins. Moscow drifts from man to man, through dance halls, all-night diners, and laboratories in which the secret of immortality is actively being investigated, exploring the endless avenues and vacant spaces of the great city whose name she bears, looking for happiness, somewhere, still. Unpublishable during Platonov’s lifetime, Happy Moscow first appeared in Russian only in 1991. This new edition contains not only a revised translation of Happy Moscow but several related works: a screenplay, a prescient essay about ecological catastrophe, and two short stories in which same characters reappear and the reader sees the mind of an extraordinary writer at work.
Download or read book The Women with Silver Wings written by Katherine Sharp Landdeck and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2020 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling true story of the daring female aviators who helped the United States win World War II--only to be forgotten by the country they served. When Japanese planes executed a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Cornelia Fort was already in the air. At twenty-two, Cornelia had escaped Nashville's debutante scene for a fresh start as a flight instructor in Hawaii. She and her student were in the middle of their lesson when the bombs began to fall, and they barely made it back to ground that morning. Still, when the U.S. Army Air Forces put out a call for women pilots to aid the war effort, Cornelia was one of the first to respond. She became one of just over 1,100 women from across the nation to make it through the Army's rigorous selection process and earn her silver wings. In The Women with Silver Wings, historian Katherine Sharp Landdeck introduces us to these young women as they meet even-tempered, methodical Nancy Love and demanding visionary Jacqueline Cochran, the trailblazing pilots who first envisioned sending American women into the air, and whose rivalry would define the Women Airforce Service Pilots. For women like Cornelia, it was a chance to serve their country--and to prove that women aviators were just as skilled and able as men. While not authorized to serve in combat, the WASP helped train male pilots for service abroad and ferried bombers and pursuits across the country. Thirty-eight of them would not survive the war. But even taking into account these tragic losses, Love and Cochran's social experiment seemed to be a resounding success--until, with the tides of war turning and fewer male pilots needed in Europe, Congress clipped the women's wings. The program was disbanded, the women sent home. But the bonds they'd forged never failed, and over the next few decades, they came together to fight for recognition as the military veterans they were--and for their place in history.
Download or read book One Woman s Army written by Janis Karpinski and published by Miramax. This book was released on 2005-10-12 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An outspoken memoir from General Janis Karpinski, telling the real story of the tragic and shameful events of 2004 from first-hand experience. Karpinski was the first and only female General Officer commanding troops in a combat zone in Iraq: although she had received no training in handling prisoners, she was selected to run Abu Ghraib. She takes readers inside the walls of the notorious holding facility, describing in unflinching detail the corruption within the armed forces and accompanying private firms. Co-written with Newsweek correspondent Steven Strasser.
Download or read book You Don t Belong Here written by Elizabeth Becker and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the barriers to women covering war Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine and Kate challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war reportage for generations. In You Don’t Belong Here, Elizabeth Becker uses these women’s work and lives to illuminate the Vietnam War from the 1965 American buildup, the expansion into Cambodia, and the American defeat and its aftermath. Arriving herself in the last years of the war, Becker writes as a historian and a witness of the times. What emerges is an unforgettable story of three journalists forging their place in a land of men, often at great personal sacrifice. Deeply reported and filled with personal letters, interviews, and profound insight, You Don’t Belong Here fills a void in the history of women and of war. ‘A riveting read with much to say about the nature of war and the different ways men and women correspondents cover it. Frank, fast-paced, often enraging, You Don’t Belong Here speaks to the distance travelled and the journey still ahead.’ —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March, former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent ‘Riveting, powerful and transformative, Elizabeth Becker’s You Don’t Belong Here tells the stories of three astonishing women. This is a timely and brilliant work from one of our most extraordinary war correspondents.’ —Madeleine Thien, Booker Prize finalist and author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Download or read book Young Men and Fire written by Norman MacLean and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: “The terrifying story of the worst disaster in the history of the US Forest Service’s elite Smokejumpers.” —Kirkus Reviews A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service’s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy in this extraordinary book. Alongside Maclean’s now-canonical A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire is recognized today as a classic of the American West. This edition of Maclean’s later triumph—the last book he would write—includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. As moving and profound as when it was first published, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul. “A moving account of humanity, nature, and the perseverance of the human spirit.” —Library Journal “Haunting.” —The Wall Street Journal “Engrossing.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Changing Heaven written by Jane Urquhart and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two worlds are intertwined in this hauntingly beautiful story as it moves from Toronto to the English moors and to Venice, Italy. The time frame shifts between present and past, linking the lives of a young Brontë scholar (a woman in the throes of a troubled love affair), a turn-of-the-century female balloonist, and an elusive explorer with the ghost – or the memory – of Emily Brontë. Urquhart reveals something about the act of artistic creation, the ways in which stories enter our lives, and about the cyclical nature of love throughout time. This is a novel of darkness and light, of intense weather and inner calm.
Download or read book Writing Home written by Alan Bennett and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together the hilarious, revealing, and lucidly intelligent writing of one of England's best known literary figures, Writing Home includes the journalism, book and theater reviews, and diaries of Alan Bennett, as well as "The Lady in the Van," his unforgettable account of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who lived in a van in Bennett's garden for more than twenty years. This revised and updated edition includes new material from the author, including more recent diaries and his introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Writing Home is a classic history of a life in letters.
Download or read book Things I Learned at Art School written by Megan Dunn and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn’s ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of her early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. From her parents’ divorce to her Smurf collection, from the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash!, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this is a dazzling, killer read from a contemporary voice of comic brilliance. Chapters include: The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty: That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don’t Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room and Submerging Artist. Praise for Tinderbox: “Tinderbox is deadpan hilarious and Megan Dunn is a comic genius.” - Susanna Andrew, Metro “Megan Dunn's wry, whip-smart memoir about Fahrenheit 451, literary ambition & the last days of Borders Bookstores is funny & insightful as hell. Like Kathy Acker meets Sue Townsend. The read of the summer! ... already one of my favourite New Zealand books.” - Hera Lindsay Bird “Witty, highly entertaining.” - Philip Matthews, Stuff "Tinderbox is such a shape-shifter, such a sui generis work, that to call it a memoir does it a disservice ... [Dunn’s] voice is hard to resist – sardonic, brazen, sagacious – recalling, in places, Nora Ephron, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Maggie Nelson.” - James Cook, Review 31
Download or read book Dead Hand written by Harold Coyle and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful doomsday weapon originally designed by the Soviets falls into the hands of nationalist fanatic General Likatchev, who threatens to unleash a global holocaust in order to topple the current Russian regime.
Download or read book Surprise Kill Vanish written by Annie Jacobsen and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.
Download or read book What Color is Your Parachute 2021 written by Richard Nelson Bolles and published by Penguin Random House. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how to identify personal goals and interests and reveals how to apply that information toward obtaining satisfying employment, with tips on interviews, salary-negotiation techniques, and career searching online.
Download or read book What Color is Your Parachute written by Richard Nelson Bolles and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
