Randy and Ralphie are a pair of raccoon kits headed for trouble. Their mother left them at home alone with explicit instructions to play quietly by the base of their giant pine tree and not to go wandering off into the forest. Because they were alone, they were very vulnerable to getting lost or hurt. She had to gather more food every day for a pair of coon cubs that were growing like weeds. If they went foraging for food with her, she constantly had to corral their eager feet and curious natures. After leaving some toothsome tidbits, she silently slipped away into the grey morning mist. Once part of the special goodies had curbed their hunger, Randy and Ralphie started playing King of the Mountain on fallen timbers around their tree. They decided it was too hot to play in the bright morning sun, and they were still hungry. Mommy must have lost the way to come back home with more food. They had to go find her because it was obvious that she must need their help. Maybe there were too many goodies to carry home alone. Thus, the mighty adventure began. Heading out from the safe area around their nest, the two beady-eyed masked bandits start the very first solo journey into the flowering meadow in search of their mom. In the distance, they hear a gurgling stream that must be explored. Footprints in the sand lead them in the direction of the vast meadow where they smell some enticing ripe berries. While picking juicy blackberries, huckleberries, and wild strawberries, they meet a very friendly bear cub who joins them in their fruit harvesting. Leaving their new friend, the two little rascals continue searching until the shadows grow long. Thwarted in their mission to find Mommy, Randy and Ralphie return to the tree and strike up a conversation with the Great Horned Owl who lives in a nest two trees away from their home. Mother returns with food and wisdom for two wayward raccoons.
What drives some governments to persevere in war at any price while others choose to stop fighting? It is often less-tangible political and economic variables, rather than raw military power, that ultimately determine national will to fight. In this analysis, the authors explore how these variables strengthen or weaken a government's determination to conduct sustained military operations, even when the expectation of success decreases or the need for significant political, economic, and military sacrifices increases. This report is part of a broader RAND Arroyo Center effort to help U.S. leaders better understand and influence will to fight at both the national level and the tactical and operational levels. It presents findings and recommendations based on a wide-ranging literature review, a series of interviews, 15 case studies (including deep dives into conflicts involving the Korean Peninsula and Russia), and reviews of relevant modeling and war-gaming. The authors propose an exploratory model of 15 variables that can be tailored and applied to a wide set of conflict scenarios and drive a much-needed dialogue among analysts conducting threat assessments, contingency plans, war games, and other efforts that require an evaluation of how future conflicts might unfold. The recommendations should provide insights into how leaders can influence will to fight in both allies and adversaries."--Publisher's description.
Randy and Ralphie are a pair of raccoon kits headed for trouble. Their mother left them at home alone with explicit instructions to play quietly by the base of their giant pine tree and not to go wandering off into the forest. Because they were alone, they were very vulnerable to getting lost or hurt. She had to gather more food every day for a pair of coon cubs that were growing like weeds. If they went foraging for food with her, she constantly had to corral their eager feet and curious natures. After leaving some toothsome tidbits, she silently slipped away into the grey morning mist. Once part of the special goodies had curbed their hunger, Randy and Ralphie started playing King of the Mountain on fallen timbers around their tree. They decided it was too hot to play in the bright morning sun, and they were still hungry. Mommy must have lost the way to come back home with more food. They had to go find her because it was obvious that she must need their help. Maybe there were too many goodies to carry home alone. Thus, the mighty adventure began. Heading out from the safe area around their nest, the two beady-eyed masked bandits start the very first solo journey into the flowering meadow in search of their mom. In the distance, they hear a gurgling stream that must be explored. Footprints in the sand lead them in the direction of the vast meadow where they smell some enticing ripe berries. While picking juicy blackberries, huckleberries, and wild strawberries, they meet a very friendly bear cub who joins them in their fruit harvesting. Leaving their new friend, the two little rascals continue searching until the shadows grow long. Thwarted in their mission to find Mommy, Randy and Ralphie return to the tree and strike up a conversation with the Great Horned Owl who lives in a nest two trees away from their home. Mother returns with food and wisdom for two wayward raccoons.
Combining a traditional survey of military history with a survey of social issues, Michael S. Neiberg examines warfare in Europe from the Fashoda conflict in modern-day Sudan to the recent war in Iraq.
“An astonishing collection of 171 interviews with Clinton’s friends, foes, admirers, and detractors as well as reporters and political analysts.”—Booklist (starred review). Though Bill Clinton has been out of office since 2001, public fascination with him continues unabated. Many books about Clinton have been published in recent years, but shockingly, no single-volume biography covers the full scope of Clinton’s life from the cradle to the present day, not even Clinton’s own account, My Life. More troubling still, books on Clinton have tended to be highly polarized, casting the former president in an overly positive or negative light. In this, the first complete oral history of Clinton’s life, historian Michael Takiff presents the first truly balanced book on one of our nation’s most controversial and fascinating presidents. Through more than 150 chronologically arranged interviews with key figures—including Bob Dole, James Carville, and Tom Brokaw, among many others—A Complicated Man goes far beyond the well-worn party-line territory to capture the larger-than-life essence of Clinton the man. With the tremendous attention given to the Lewinsky scandal, it is easy to overlook the president’s humble upbringing, as well as his many achievements at home and abroad: the longest economic boom in American history, a balanced budget, successful intervention in the Balkans, and a series of landmark, if controversial, free-trade agreements. Through the candid recollections of Takiff’s many subjects, A Complicated Man leaves no area unexplored, revealing the most complete and unexpected portrait of our forty-second president published to date. “Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony.”—Nigel Hamilton, bestselling and award-winning author of American Caesars
A history of wars through the ages and across the world, and the irrational calculations that so often lie behind them Benjamin Franklin once said, “There never was a good war or a bad peace.” But what determines whether war or peace is chosen? Award-winning sociologist Michael Mann concludes that it is a handful of political leaders—people with emotions and ideologies, and constrained by inherited culture and institutions—who undertake such decisions, usually irrationally choosing war and seldom achieving their desired results. Mann examines the history of war through the ages and across the globe—from ancient Rome to Ukraine, from imperial China to the Middle East, from Japan and Europe to Latin and North America. He explores the reasons groups go to war, the different forms of wars, how warfare has changed and how it has stayed the same, and the surprising ways in which seemingly powerful countries lose wars. In masterfully combining ideological, economic, political, and military analysis, Mann offers new insight into the many consequences of choosing war.
What the world is now witnessing in Ukraine is the cumulative effect of history and memory in the lives of the people of the region—and this book directly addresses those subjects. Although the majority of scholarship on the Soviet Union focuses on top-level political and intellectual elites, these groups were only tiny minorities. What was life like for the rest of society? What was it like for the vast population that usually supported the regime, mostly accepted the rules, essentially internalized the ideology, and generally made the same choices as their neighbors and friends? What was it like to live Soviet as the USSR hit its peak as a superpower and then fell apart? What was it like to live Soviet in Ukraine in the decade after independence? This book answers those questions. It is an oral history of a group of military colonels and their wives, children, and contemporaries, covering their lives from childhood to the present. During this period, these military families went from comfortable economic circumstances, professional prestige, and political influence as part of the Soviet upper stratum, to destitution and disgrace in the 1990s. Today, many of them are part of Europe’s largest ethnic minority—Russians in Ukraine. The geographic focus is Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Europe’s second-largest country, a Russian-speaking city in eastern Ukraine. Based on 3,000+ pages of interview transcripts and supplemented with materials gleaned from unprecedented access to personal, family, and institutional archives, the book investigates how families endured shifting social, cultural, and political realities. By analyzing the lives of individuals in context, Westrate provides insights at the grassroots level. He reveals how ideological, professional, gender, ethnic, and national imperatives—as developed and transmitted by elites—were internalized, transformed, or rejected by the rank and file. He reveals how the subjective identities of individuals and small groups developed and changed over time, and how that process relates to the parallel projects pursued by the leaders of their countries. In the process, he shows what those experiences have to offer the study of Soviet, post-Soviet, and transnational history, bridging the boundaries created by the collapse of the USSR and exploring the foundations of both twenty-first-century Ukraine and today’s conflicts.
On March 15, 1965, at 2:00 p.m., Theodore Poland was in the Newark, New Jersey, at the supreme court of Judge Jocoby Graham, waiting to be sentenced for attempted murder. The two shooting victims in wheelchairs accusing Theodore were quietly speaking with several assistant prosecutors in the courtroom and reviewing the police report, whose recommendations to the court was immediate psychiatric treatment and life imprisonment for the young teenager Theodore Poland. At that moment, Theodore thought to himself, “I’m never getting out of prison.” Michael Tombs is very careful not to isolate the world of ideas, ideology, and innovation. After all, it has simply come to that in the secret world of new ideas that Michael Tombs lives in. History seems to imply that Michael Tombs had no real life before he became a member of the Black Youth Organization or connection to the scientific breakthrough Cris-Tut-Vital Study Program. At first, Michael Tombs believed it was only a theory; however, Dr. Lateef Jamal, a native of Zimbabwe, secured lucrative intellectual property rights as a visiting professor at the St. Thomas Institute of Technology. With it, Tombs realized that production would rise and that there would be a demand for workers in the African nation of Zimbabwe.
While the Red Army’s arsenal at the start of the Second World War included weapons dating back to the Great War or earlier, the 1930s’ modernization program had introduced the automatic Tokarev pistol and self-loading Tokarev rifle. Its small arms were soon replaced by mass-produced sub-machine guns, such as the PPSh 1941, nicknamed the ‘PePeSha,’. Supplementing the submachine guns, the Degtyarev Light Machine Gun DP-27. Fitted with a circular pan magazine, it received the not-unsurprising nickname ‘Record Player.’ New mortars and towed artillery pieces, ranging from 76mm to 203mm, entered service in the pre-war years. In addition to a wide range of towed, self-propelled and anti-tank guns, the Soviets fielded the Katyusha rocket launchers in 1941, nicknamed the ‘Stalin’s organ’ by the Germans. The 1930s saw the introduction of the BT light tank series. The iconic T-34 medium tank series came into service in late 1940, joined by the IS-2 heavy tank from early 1944, the prefix letters ‘IS’ translates to Joseph Stalin. These formidable AFVs led the Red Army to victory in May 1945 over Nazi Germany. All these weapons and more are covered with numerous images in this authoritative overview of the subject.
Mass killing through genocide haunts humanity as one of the most horrific forms of warfare. Scholars seek to understand what causes such violence, but it is still difficult to predict the onset of genocide. Why does violence sometime stop short of the genocide threshold, whilst others cross the threshold? Why do some genocides escalate to the point of triggering the state's collapse? Finally, why are some groups targeted and others spared? Examining Genocide considers these questions by interrogating the interaction of three sets of conditions. These are: a societal crisis that creates a need for mass mobilization to “heal” the fractured public and address its material concerns; the stereotype associated with an “eligible target” for scapegoating; and the leadership preferences and skills of the chief executive of an authoritarian or poorly institutionalized state in question. Exploring case studies that cover various levels and instances of genocide, this book offers new insights to this highly researched field for scholars and students alike.
Armies of Sand asks, 'why have Arab militaries fought so poorly in the modern era?' It examines the performance of over two-dozen Arab militaries from 1948 to 2017, and compares them to a half-dozen non-Arab militaries, to conclude that politics, economics, and culture all contributed to the past weakness of Arab armies.
A touching chronicle of the Brooklyn Dodgers and their last great season retraces this legendary team's final pennant and their difficult, subsequent move to Los Angeles.
Composers in the Classroom is a bio-bibliographical dictionary, chronicling the careers and work of over 120 composers associated with conservatories, colleges, and universities in the United States and Puerto Rico. Scholars and students of music seeking critical information about composers who have taken on the mantle of instruction will find a wealth of detail on their subjects. Painstakingly obtained through direct correspondence with the composers themselves, Floyd includes within each entry a short biography of the composer's life and education, lists of previous positions, most prominent commissions, awards and honors, and notable performers of the subject's work. Each entry also contains a discography of the recordings and a bibliography of writings by the composer. Researchers will find especially useful the organization of each subject's compositions by a variety of types. These include vocal, choral/assembly, dramatic, keyboard, solo instrument, handbells, chamber music, jazz ensemble, band and wind ensemble, band and wind ensemble with solo instruments, orchestra, orchestra with solo instruments, film/television/commercial, electro-acoustic and multimedia, arrangements, transcriptions, and editions and reconstructions. Music scholars will find under each work not only the title and date of composition but also the date of revision, commission, and dedication information, as well as other pertinent details ranging from the names of collaborators to alternate titles under which works may circulate. Composers in the Classroom is an indispensable tool to scholars of modern music seeking to research the current state of musical composition and the compositional trends of the 21st century.
From citrus trees to spring breakers, Transforming the Irvine Ranch tells the story of Orange County’s metamorphosis from 93,000 acres of farmland into an iconic Southern California landscape of beaches and modernist architecture. Drawing on decades of archival research and their own years at the famed Irvine Company, the authors bring a collection of colorful characters responsible for the transformation to life, including: Ray Watson, whose nearly century-long life took him from an Oakland boarding house to the Irvine and Walt Disney Company boardrooms Joan Irvine Smith, a much-married heiress who waged war against the US government and the Irvine Foundation's reactionary board and won William Pereira, the visionary architect whose work became synonymous with the LA cityscape. Spanning the history of modern California from its Gold Rush past to the late 1970s, Transforming the Irvine Ranch chronicles a storied family’s largely successful attempts to remake the vast Irvine Ranch in its own image.
Up-to-date, authoritative and comprehensive, Heart Failure, 4th Edition, provides the clinically relevant information you need to effectively manage and treat patients with this complex cardiovascular problem. This fully revised companion to Braunwald’s Heart Disease helps you make the most of new drug therapies such as angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitors (ARNIs), recently improved implantable devices, and innovative patient management strategies. Led by internationally recognized heart failure experts Dr. G. Michael Felker and Dr. Douglas Mann, this outstanding reference gives health care providers the knowledge to improve clinical outcomes in heart failure patients. Focuses on a clinical approach to treating heart failure, resulting from a broad variety of cardiovascular problems. Covers the most recent guidelines and protocols, including significant new updates to ACC, AHA, and HFSA guidelines. Covers key topics such as biomarkers and precision medicine in heart failure and new data on angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitors (ARNIs). Contains four new chapters: Natriuretic Peptides in Heart Failure; Amyloidosis as a Cause of Heart Failure; HIV and Heart Failure; and Neuromodulation in Heart Failure. Covers the pathophysiological basis for the development and progression of heart failure. Serves as a definitive resource to prepare for the ABIM’s Heart Failure board exam. 2016 British Medical Association Award: First Prize, Cardiology (3rd Edition).
A feast of stories and statistics about players, ballparks, and teams--all arranged so that calculations can be skipped by general readers but consulted by statisticians eager to follow Schell's methods or to introduce students to the basic concepts of statistics. Illustrations.
In 1989 a woman fishing in Texas on a quiet stretch of the Colorado River snagged a body. Her “catch” was the corpse of Johnny Jenkins, shot in the head. His death was as dramatic as the rare book dealer’s life, which read, as the Austin American-Statesman declared, “like a bestseller.” In 1975 Jenkins had staged the largest rare book coup of the twentieth century—the purchase, for more than two million dollars, of the legendary Eberstadt inventory of rare Americana, a feat noted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His undercover work for the FBI, recovering rare books stolen by mafia figures, had also earned him headlines coast to coast, as had his exploits as “Austin Squatty,” playing high stakes poker in Las Vegas. But beneath such public triumphs lay darker secrets. At the time of his death, Jenkins was about to be indicted by the ATF for the arson of his rare books, warehouse, and offices. Another investigation implicated Jenkins in forgeries of historical documents, including the Texas Declaration of Independence. Rumors of million-dollar gambling debts at mob-connected casinos circulated, along with the rumblings of irate mafia figures he’d fingered and eccentric Texas collectors he’d cheated. Had he been murdered? Or was his death a suicide, staged to look like a murder? How Jenkins, a onetime president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, came to such an unseemly end is one of the mysteries Michael Vinson pursues in this spirited account of a tragic American life. Entrepreneur, con man, connoisseur, forger, and self-made hero, Jenkins was a Texan who knew how to bluff but not when to fold.
Would You Lie to Save a Life? Love Will Find a Way Home: A Theology on the Ethics of Love In 1968, Commander Lloyd Bucher and the USS Pueblo were pirated on the high seas. They were held captive for 11 months, and Bucher was forced to sign a confession – forced to lie to save the lives of his men. How does Love impact that decsion in a Christian theology? Love makes the world go round. Without Love, little else has value this side of heaven. In this dilemma between Love and Truth, Love was chosen over Truth, but not at the expense of all Truth. Between the deontological and teleological elements, time itself comes into play in the determination of the absolute "rightness" of the choice in perfect Love. How is as capable as Jesus was and is today? The course of Love is a sacred "stewardship of time" that is the highest exhibition of the Christian’s own Imago Dei or image of God granted to us in creation. When we are able to follow the Scarlet Thread of obedience perfectly, it will lead straight through all of (1) the areas of complexity, uniting (2) all of the demands of all of the absolutes and run dead center between (3) all of the ethical fine lines. These three areas are detailed specifically.
Baseball's ranks are filled with those whose careers may not have been as spectacular as Ruth or Mays but who played essential roles in the game's history, like footnotes in a great book. Some were well known in their day, featured on the front of the sports section; others were lesser lights whose feats and misdeeds were so notable they deserve to be remembered. Bert Shepard pitched a game for the Washington Senators in 1945 despite being shot down over Germany the year before and losing a leg. Bernie Carbo hit a dramatic three-run homer in the eighth inning to tie Game Six of the 1975 World Series--but his blast was completely upstaged an hour or so later by Red Sox teammate Carlton Fisk's unforgettable shot down the left field line. Bo Belinsky no-hit the powerful Baltimore Orioles in 1962, but he finished his career with a monumentally disappointing 28-51 record. The 39 other subjects profiled in this work prove that, in baseball, fame can be fleeting.
The Honolulu Marathon debuted in 1973 as the shared vision of a maverick cardiologist bent on proving the benefit of long-distance running for cardiac patients and an impetuous mayor eager to prove Honolulu the equal of the top cities in the country. Over a span of forty-plus years, the race matured into one of the largest marathons in the world, a $100 million economic engine for its home state, and a launch pad for some of the most dominant long-distance runners in modern history. From its modest start as a community event for local amateurs, the race now regularly attracts 30,000 entrants—more than half from Japan—and boasts elite fields led by Kenyan and Ethiopian professional runners, each hoping to earn a share of a $150,000 prize purse. The People’s Race Inc. captures the personalities, politics, and power plays behind the burgeoning growth of the Honolulu Marathon and provides a unique lens for understanding the complex history of the sport itself. Drawn from revealing interviews with those closest to the event, as well as exhaustive research, journalist Michael Tsai presents an insider’s account of how organizers forged lucrative partnerships with foreign investors, helped initiate the age of African dominance of the marathon, and weathered some of the most bizarre challenges imaginable. The book also exposes the ways in which the marathon's expansive growth mirrored the explosive, at times bewildering, development of post-statehood Hawai‘i.
Bereft of any comprehensive analysis and subject to little if any sustained debate, the tangential location of the prohibition of propaganda for war in the discourse of international law has resulted in a situation where state conduct in this area too often appears to be acting in a legal vacuum. In proposing a more robust role for international law in responding to what is a matter of widespread public concern, the book analyses the context in which international law first came to be concerned with propaganda for war in the years following the First World War. With the establishment of the United Nations and the corresponding development of international human rights law, the issue of the prohibition of propaganda for war in both human rights law and international criminal law became a highly significant, yet frequently divisive matter during the Cold War. Drawing on primary materials from the League of Nations to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, this book makes the case for the revitalisation of a provision of international law which can be fundamental to the prevention of war. The book examines international human rights law, the travaux préparatoires to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, communications between the Human Rights Committee and states parties to the Covenant, state practice, and international criminal law. Drawing on the manner by which international tribunals from Nuremberg to The Hague have approached the matter of individual criminal responsibility for 'incitement to crimes of an international dimension', the book proposes that 'direct and public incitement to aggression' be included as a crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Although many books outline approaches for successful ERP implementations, the data shows that most ERP efforts yield minimal return on investment (ROI), with most projects failing. Directing the ERP Implementation: A Best Practice Guide to Avoiding Program Failure Traps While Tuning System Performance supplies best practices along with a proven ro
This fully updated second edition is a selective annotated bibliography of all relevant published resources relating to church and worship music in the United States. Over the past decade, there has been a growth of literature covering everything from traditional subject matter such as the organ works of J.S. Bach to newer areas of inquiry including folk hymnology, women and African-American composers, music as a spiritual healer, to the music of Mormon, Shaker, Moravian, and other smaller sects. With multiple indices, this book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field.
For more than seven decades Nick Lucas was an entertainer, beginning as a child street musician and becoming one of the most popular singer-guitarists of all time. He was a popular sideman in bands, and his solo career conquered radio, recordings, vaudeville, Broadway, films, night clubs and television. He is credited with being the first musician to replace the banjo with the guitar in big bands and on records, and with initiating the "intimate style" of singing, making him the first crooner.Nick Lucas' guitar playing contributed significantly to the instrument's popularity, and he influenced generations of players with his instruction books and by having a line of popular guitar picks bearing his name. He was the first guitarist to have a custom-made model, "The Nick Lucas Special." This biography comprehensively covers Nick Lucas' career as he entertained audiences in the United States, England and Australia, becoming a beloved star and influencing popular music to the present day.
A History of American Music Education covers the history of American music education, from its roots in Biblical times through recent historical events and trends. It describes the educational, philosophical, and sociological aspects of the subject, always putting it in the context of the history of the United States. It offers complete information on professional organizations, materials, techniques, and personalities in music education.
Sal Mineo is probably most well-known for his unforgettable, Academy Award–nominated turn opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and his tragic murder at the age of thirty-seven. Finally, in this riveting new biography filled with exclusive, candid interviews with both Mineo’s closest female and male lovers and never-before-published photographs, Michael Gregg Michaud tells the full story of this remarkable young actor’s life, charting his meteoric rise to fame and turbulent career and private life. One of the hottest stars of the 1950s, Mineo grew up as the son of Sicilian immigrants in a humble Bronx flat. But by age eleven, he appeared on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo, and then as Prince Chulalongkorn in the original Broadway production of The King and I starring Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence. This sultry-eyed, dark-haired male ingénue of sorts appeared on the cover of every major magazine, thousands of star-struck fans attended his premieres, and millions bought his records, which included several top-ten hits. His life offstage was just as exhilarating: full of sports cars, motor boats, famous friends, and some of the most beautiful young actresses in Hollywood. But it was fourteen-year-old Jill Haworth, his costar in Exodus—the film that delivered one of the greatest acting roles of his life and earned him another Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win—with whom he fell in love and moved to the West Coast. But by the 1960s, a series of professional missteps and an increasingly tumultuous private life reversed his fortunes. By the late sixties and early seventies, grappling with the repercussions of publicly admitting his homosexuality and struggling to reinvent himself from an aging teen idol, Mineo turned toward increasingly self-destructive behavior. Yet his creative impulses never foundered. He began directing and producing controversial off-Broadway plays that explored social and sexual taboos. He also found personal happiness in a relationship with male actor Courtney Burr. Tragically, on the cusp of turning a new page in his life, Mineo’s life was cut short in a botched robbery. Revealing a charming, mischievous, creative, and often scandalous side of Mineo few have known before now, Sal Mineo is an intimate, moving biography of a distinctive Hollywood star.
The Rocket Lab: Maurice Zucrow, Purdue University, and America’s Race to Space focuses on the golden era of space exploration between 1946 and 1966, specifically the life and times of Purdue University’s Dr. Maurice J. Zucrow, a pioneering teacher and researcher in aerospace engineering. Zucrow taught America’s first university course in jet and rocket propulsion, wrote the field’s first textbook, and established the country’s first educational Rocket Lab. He was part of a small circle of innovators who transformed Purdue into the country’s largest engineering university, which became a cradle of astronauts. Taking a chronological and thematic approach, The Rocket Lab weaves between the local and national, drawing in rival universities, especially Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Caltech. Also covered is Zucrow’s role in the national project system of research and development through World War II and the Cold War. At Aerojet, he was one of the country’s original project engineers, dedicated to scientific-technical expertise and the stepwise approach. He made vanguard power plant contributions to the Northrop Flying Wing, as well as the Corporal, Nike, and Atlas missiles, among others. Zucrow’s work in propulsion helped to improve the country’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and space launchers, and as a teacher, he educated the first generation of aerospace engineers. This book elevates Zucrow and the central role he played in getting the United States to space.
Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
“You need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy . . . and incisiveness of [Moneyball]. Lewis has hit another one out of the park.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager, is leading a revolution. Reinventing his team on a budget, he needs to outsmart the richer teams. He signs undervalued players whom the scouts consider flawed but who have a knack for getting on base, scoring runs, and winning games. Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball and a tale of the search for new baseball knowledge—insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.
Professional football today is an $8 billion sports entertainment industry--and the most popular spectator sport in America, with designs on expansion across the globe. In this astute field-level view of the National Football League since 1960, Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and at the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life. New to the paperback edition is Oriard's analysis of the offseason labor negotiations and their potential effects on the future of the sport, and his account of how the NFL is dealing with the latest research on concussions and head injuries.
This book chronicles the life story of Ted Turner—cable television mogul, successful baseball team owner, and fascinating public figure. Ted Turner: A Biography tells the story of a man whose wide range of accomplishments have led to a Man of the Year award from Time magazine, induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame, and numerous awards and honorary degrees for humanitarian, philanthropic, and environmental activism. Ted Turner shows how this remarkable, unpredictable man built the risky purchase of a small Atlanta UHF station into a cable television juggernaut, as well as how Turner transformed the Atlanta Braves from a lowly franchise to one of baseball's most popular and successful teams. The book also highlights other fascinating aspects of Turner's life, including his record-breaking career as a yachtsman, his extraordinary efforts to save the American bison, his headline-making marriage to Jane Fonda, and his sometimes contradictory, often controversial public persona.
Founded in 1958 by members of America's first postwar domestic Nazi-inspired movement, the National States Rights Party developed both as a political protest movement and as a vehicle of violent resistance to the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Its acts of terrorism made international headlines and claimed multiple lives. Evidence suggests that Party members were involved in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Officially dissolved in 1987, the National States Rights Party was revived in 2005 and one of its original founders remains active in racial agitation on the Internet.
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