Author: Michael Petridis
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1669814742
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 99
Book Description
You’ve seen the images from Hollywood. Macho, tough, with an almost John Wayne air about him, the fighter pilot has been famously portrayed as a gallant warrior. Now, take a look behind the scenes at a different look at the fighter pilot. Gone is the mystique and sense of danger. Instead is a fresh look at the comical aspects of being a fighter pilot; events, scenarios, during war and during peacetime, that show quite a different picture of the “hard as nails” image of the fighter pilot. Fictitious callsigns such as “Maverick” and “Ghostrider” are replaced with “Moe,” “Larry”, and “Curly.” Yes, there are scenes where these nonchalant, easygoing fighter-pilot types are racing through the sky, boring holes in the clouds, going supersonic; but it’s how and why they are there that makes the story interesting. Shooting rockets at the wrong target, scrambling to takeoff in the middle of the night from a dead sleep, ejecting from the aircraft after breaking it apart on the ground, getting lost while airborne, frantically trying to strafe a Soviet jet --- these are all the stories about real flying that never make the headlines of the daily paper. Working hard and playing hard, the fighter pilot genre is shown anew, much to the reader’s delight. Those who have pressed the edge and lived to talk about it know these stories; those aspiring to do so will simply be amazed, ready to stand in line for their turn.
Fighter Pilot Follies
Author: Michael Petridis
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1669814742
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 99
Book Description
You’ve seen the images from Hollywood. Macho, tough, with an almost John Wayne air about him, the fighter pilot has been famously portrayed as a gallant warrior. Now, take a look behind the scenes at a different look at the fighter pilot. Gone is the mystique and sense of danger. Instead is a fresh look at the comical aspects of being a fighter pilot; events, scenarios, during war and during peacetime, that show quite a different picture of the “hard as nails” image of the fighter pilot. Fictitious callsigns such as “Maverick” and “Ghostrider” are replaced with “Moe,” “Larry”, and “Curly.” Yes, there are scenes where these nonchalant, easygoing fighter-pilot types are racing through the sky, boring holes in the clouds, going supersonic; but it’s how and why they are there that makes the story interesting. Shooting rockets at the wrong target, scrambling to takeoff in the middle of the night from a dead sleep, ejecting from the aircraft after breaking it apart on the ground, getting lost while airborne, frantically trying to strafe a Soviet jet --- these are all the stories about real flying that never make the headlines of the daily paper. Working hard and playing hard, the fighter pilot genre is shown anew, much to the reader’s delight. Those who have pressed the edge and lived to talk about it know these stories; those aspiring to do so will simply be amazed, ready to stand in line for their turn.
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1669814742
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 99
Book Description
You’ve seen the images from Hollywood. Macho, tough, with an almost John Wayne air about him, the fighter pilot has been famously portrayed as a gallant warrior. Now, take a look behind the scenes at a different look at the fighter pilot. Gone is the mystique and sense of danger. Instead is a fresh look at the comical aspects of being a fighter pilot; events, scenarios, during war and during peacetime, that show quite a different picture of the “hard as nails” image of the fighter pilot. Fictitious callsigns such as “Maverick” and “Ghostrider” are replaced with “Moe,” “Larry”, and “Curly.” Yes, there are scenes where these nonchalant, easygoing fighter-pilot types are racing through the sky, boring holes in the clouds, going supersonic; but it’s how and why they are there that makes the story interesting. Shooting rockets at the wrong target, scrambling to takeoff in the middle of the night from a dead sleep, ejecting from the aircraft after breaking it apart on the ground, getting lost while airborne, frantically trying to strafe a Soviet jet --- these are all the stories about real flying that never make the headlines of the daily paper. Working hard and playing hard, the fighter pilot genre is shown anew, much to the reader’s delight. Those who have pressed the edge and lived to talk about it know these stories; those aspiring to do so will simply be amazed, ready to stand in line for their turn.
Arsenals of Folly
Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375713948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet and U.S. participants and a wealth of new documentation to unravel the compelling, shocking story behind this monumental time in human history—its beginnings, its nearly chilling consequences, and its effects on global politics today.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375713948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet and U.S. participants and a wealth of new documentation to unravel the compelling, shocking story behind this monumental time in human history—its beginnings, its nearly chilling consequences, and its effects on global politics today.
Stalin's Folly
Author: Konstantin Pleshakov
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0618773614
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0618773614
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.
Polk's Folly
Author: William R. Polk
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385491514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 610
Book Description
Polk's Folly is William Polk's captivating investigation of his impressive family tree and of the broader American tale it narrates. Growing up in Texas in the late 1930s, listening to his grandmother's memories of her childhood amidst the Civil War, Polk became fascinated by tales of his family's engagement in monumental moments of our nation's history. Beginning when Robert Pollok fled Ireland in the 1680s, Polk's saga includes an Indian trader, an early drafter of the Declaration of Independence, one of our greatest presidents, heroes and rascals on both sides of the Civil War, Indian fighters, a World War I diplomat, and Polk's own brother, a journalist who reported on the Nuremberg Trials. Full of stunning detail and based on primary historical documents, Polk's Folly is a grand American chronicle that allows history to include the lives that made it happen.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385491514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 610
Book Description
Polk's Folly is William Polk's captivating investigation of his impressive family tree and of the broader American tale it narrates. Growing up in Texas in the late 1930s, listening to his grandmother's memories of her childhood amidst the Civil War, Polk became fascinated by tales of his family's engagement in monumental moments of our nation's history. Beginning when Robert Pollok fled Ireland in the 1680s, Polk's saga includes an Indian trader, an early drafter of the Declaration of Independence, one of our greatest presidents, heroes and rascals on both sides of the Civil War, Indian fighters, a World War I diplomat, and Polk's own brother, a journalist who reported on the Nuremberg Trials. Full of stunning detail and based on primary historical documents, Polk's Folly is a grand American chronicle that allows history to include the lives that made it happen.
Mother Folly
Author: Françoise Davoine
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804792240
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
If your mentally ill patient dies, are you to blame? For Dr. Françoise Davoine, a Parisian psychoanalyst, this question becomes disturbingly real as one of her patients commits suicide on the eve of All Saints' Day. She herself has a crisis, as she reflects on her thirty-year career and questions whether she should ever return to the hospital. But return she does, and thus commences a strange voyage across several centuries and countries, in which patients, fools, and the actors of medieval farces rise up from the past along with great thinkers who represent the author's own philosophical and literary sources: the humanist Erasmus, mathematician René Thom, writer Antonin Artaud, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and physicist Edwin Schrödinger, to name a few. Imaginary dialogues ensue as the analyst conjures up an interconnected world, where apiculture, wondrous rituals, theater, and language games illuminate her therapeutic practice as well as her personal history. Deeply affected by her voyage of discovery, the author becomes capable of implementing the teachings of psychotherapist Gaetano Benedetti, a mentor she visits at carnival time on a final fictional stopover in Switzerland. His advice, that the analyst become the equal of her patients and immerse herself in their madness so as to open up a space for treatment, is premised on the belief that individual illness is a reflection and result of severe historical trauma. Mother Folly, which ends on a positive note, is an important intervention in the debate about how to treat the mentally ill, particularly those with psychosis. A practicing analyst and a skilled reader of literary and philosophical texts, Davoine provides a humane antidote to our increasingly mechanized and drug-reliant system of dealing with "fools and madmen."
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804792240
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
If your mentally ill patient dies, are you to blame? For Dr. Françoise Davoine, a Parisian psychoanalyst, this question becomes disturbingly real as one of her patients commits suicide on the eve of All Saints' Day. She herself has a crisis, as she reflects on her thirty-year career and questions whether she should ever return to the hospital. But return she does, and thus commences a strange voyage across several centuries and countries, in which patients, fools, and the actors of medieval farces rise up from the past along with great thinkers who represent the author's own philosophical and literary sources: the humanist Erasmus, mathematician René Thom, writer Antonin Artaud, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and physicist Edwin Schrödinger, to name a few. Imaginary dialogues ensue as the analyst conjures up an interconnected world, where apiculture, wondrous rituals, theater, and language games illuminate her therapeutic practice as well as her personal history. Deeply affected by her voyage of discovery, the author becomes capable of implementing the teachings of psychotherapist Gaetano Benedetti, a mentor she visits at carnival time on a final fictional stopover in Switzerland. His advice, that the analyst become the equal of her patients and immerse herself in their madness so as to open up a space for treatment, is premised on the belief that individual illness is a reflection and result of severe historical trauma. Mother Folly, which ends on a positive note, is an important intervention in the debate about how to treat the mentally ill, particularly those with psychosis. A practicing analyst and a skilled reader of literary and philosophical texts, Davoine provides a humane antidote to our increasingly mechanized and drug-reliant system of dealing with "fools and madmen."
Jacob's Folly
Author: Rebecca Miller
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466836377
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
A luminous novel-funny and moving in equal measure-that shines with the author's unique talents Jacob's Folly is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book, brimful of sparkling, unexpected characters, that takes on desire, faith, love, acting-and reincarnation. In eighteenth-century Paris, Jacob Cerf is a Jew, a peddler of knives, saltcellars, and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, he is determined to raise himself up in life, by whatever means he can. More than two hundred years later, Jacob is amazed to find himself reincarnated as a fly in the Long Island suburbs of twenty-first-century America, his new life twisted in ways he could never have imagined. But even the tiniest of insects can influence the turning of the world, and thanks to his arrival, the lives of a reliable volunteer fireman and a young Orthodox Jewish woman nursing a secret ambition will never be the same. Through the unique lens of Jacob's consciousness, Rebecca Miller explores change in all its different guises-personal, spiritual, literal. The hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, the collision of fate and free will: Miller's world-which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit-comes brilliantly to life in the pages of this profoundly original novel.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466836377
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
A luminous novel-funny and moving in equal measure-that shines with the author's unique talents Jacob's Folly is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book, brimful of sparkling, unexpected characters, that takes on desire, faith, love, acting-and reincarnation. In eighteenth-century Paris, Jacob Cerf is a Jew, a peddler of knives, saltcellars, and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, he is determined to raise himself up in life, by whatever means he can. More than two hundred years later, Jacob is amazed to find himself reincarnated as a fly in the Long Island suburbs of twenty-first-century America, his new life twisted in ways he could never have imagined. But even the tiniest of insects can influence the turning of the world, and thanks to his arrival, the lives of a reliable volunteer fireman and a young Orthodox Jewish woman nursing a secret ambition will never be the same. Through the unique lens of Jacob's consciousness, Rebecca Miller explores change in all its different guises-personal, spiritual, literal. The hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, the collision of fate and free will: Miller's world-which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit-comes brilliantly to life in the pages of this profoundly original novel.
The Führer's Folly
Author: Howard Marten
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1479789801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
Young female voices chattered and laughed as the team emerged from the mess hut, donned their field caps then headed toward the anti-aircraft battery. All carried the khaki gas-mask packs that thumped awkwardly on their hips with the weight of the steel helmets, but only the first five wore the red lightning flash badges on their shoulders and they made for the octagonal shape on the ground beyond the arc of the guns. They wore the insignia of the Ground Location Unit; the new wonder device that they hoped would turn the initial success of Germany's aerial invasion.
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1479789801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
Young female voices chattered and laughed as the team emerged from the mess hut, donned their field caps then headed toward the anti-aircraft battery. All carried the khaki gas-mask packs that thumped awkwardly on their hips with the weight of the steel helmets, but only the first five wore the red lightning flash badges on their shoulders and they made for the octagonal shape on the ground beyond the arc of the guns. They wore the insignia of the Ground Location Unit; the new wonder device that they hoped would turn the initial success of Germany's aerial invasion.
The Folly of War
Author: Donald E. Schmidt
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 0875863841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 770
Book Description
The Folly of War is a hard-hitting, critical analysis of American wars in the 20th century that set a pattern for the early 21st century. Drawing on a wide rage of sources and rigorously marshaling the facts, the book concludes that these wars have been futile, unnecessary and foolish. Rejecting the Left's contention that American foreign policy has been driven by greedy corporate interests, the author starts from the premise that average Americans have supported these wars out of a will to do good" but have failed in that aim, and in the process done much harm. This is a disturbing book that raises questions about how we go to war, how we fight wars, and how we eventually lose wars. Many Americans viewed the military defeat in Vietnam as an aberration, interrupting a string of foreign military successes. This book sees that tragedy as part of a line of politically reckless engagements. Driven by a proud self assurance that is often termed American exceptionalism, the nation arms itself to the teeth and intrudes into every region, pacing on a treadmill of perpetual war to achieve perpetual peace. Writing Chapter 13, "The War on Terror - The Contrived War" in 2003, just as the Bush administration was making its fateful decision to invade Iraq, Schmidt concluded at that time that the discussion among the principals (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, etc.) was stacked with faulty information and the decision was made on an emotional level rather than a rational one. Further, he predicted that nothing good would come of the Iraq venture -- unfortunately that assessment was correct. One of the officials in the Bush White House who participated in the pre-war discussions, admitted the attack was irrational: "The only reason we went into Iraq is we were looking for somebody's ass to kick ... Afghanistan was too easy." (Days of Fire - Bush and Cheney in the White House, by Peter Baker, p 191, Doubleday, 2013). At the end of seven major wars and after one million American soldiers have been killed, we are no closer to the perfect security we seek.
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 0875863841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 770
Book Description
The Folly of War is a hard-hitting, critical analysis of American wars in the 20th century that set a pattern for the early 21st century. Drawing on a wide rage of sources and rigorously marshaling the facts, the book concludes that these wars have been futile, unnecessary and foolish. Rejecting the Left's contention that American foreign policy has been driven by greedy corporate interests, the author starts from the premise that average Americans have supported these wars out of a will to do good" but have failed in that aim, and in the process done much harm. This is a disturbing book that raises questions about how we go to war, how we fight wars, and how we eventually lose wars. Many Americans viewed the military defeat in Vietnam as an aberration, interrupting a string of foreign military successes. This book sees that tragedy as part of a line of politically reckless engagements. Driven by a proud self assurance that is often termed American exceptionalism, the nation arms itself to the teeth and intrudes into every region, pacing on a treadmill of perpetual war to achieve perpetual peace. Writing Chapter 13, "The War on Terror - The Contrived War" in 2003, just as the Bush administration was making its fateful decision to invade Iraq, Schmidt concluded at that time that the discussion among the principals (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, etc.) was stacked with faulty information and the decision was made on an emotional level rather than a rational one. Further, he predicted that nothing good would come of the Iraq venture -- unfortunately that assessment was correct. One of the officials in the Bush White House who participated in the pre-war discussions, admitted the attack was irrational: "The only reason we went into Iraq is we were looking for somebody's ass to kick ... Afghanistan was too easy." (Days of Fire - Bush and Cheney in the White House, by Peter Baker, p 191, Doubleday, 2013). At the end of seven major wars and after one million American soldiers have been killed, we are no closer to the perfect security we seek.
From Vision to Folly in the American Soul
Author: Thomas Singer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000296385
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 141
Book Description
In From Vision to Folly in the American Soul Thomas Singer collates his investigations into soul both in its personal and collective manifestations. With selected essays from twenty years of writing about American politics in the context of contemporary cultural trends, the book as a whole depicts an ongoing exploration of the complex relationships between individual and collective psyche in which reality, illusion, vision, and folly get all mixed up in overlapping political, cultural and psychological conflicts. This text is a valuable resource for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, politics, sociology, and American studies as well as for anyone interested in the current state of the US.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000296385
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 141
Book Description
In From Vision to Folly in the American Soul Thomas Singer collates his investigations into soul both in its personal and collective manifestations. With selected essays from twenty years of writing about American politics in the context of contemporary cultural trends, the book as a whole depicts an ongoing exploration of the complex relationships between individual and collective psyche in which reality, illusion, vision, and folly get all mixed up in overlapping political, cultural and psychological conflicts. This text is a valuable resource for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, politics, sociology, and American studies as well as for anyone interested in the current state of the US.
Once A Fighter Pilot
Author: Jerry Cook
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071399208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
* The true adventure tales of a U.S. Air Force fighter who flew more than 400 combat hours while on duty in Vietnam * Provides a rare insider's glimpse into the world of the flying elite, detailing their education, training, emotions, and day to day experiences * Poignant, sometimes funny, brutally honest, always exciting, and an eye-opening look at one of the most tumultuous eras in U.S. history.
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071399208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
* The true adventure tales of a U.S. Air Force fighter who flew more than 400 combat hours while on duty in Vietnam * Provides a rare insider's glimpse into the world of the flying elite, detailing their education, training, emotions, and day to day experiences * Poignant, sometimes funny, brutally honest, always exciting, and an eye-opening look at one of the most tumultuous eras in U.S. history.