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.

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.

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.

In February 1999, only a few weeks before the U.S. Air Force spearheaded NATO's Allied Force air campaign against Serbia, Col. C.R. Anderegg, USAF (Ret.), visited the commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe. Colonel Anderegg had known Gen. John Jumper since they had served together as jet forward air controllers in Southeast Asia nearly thirty years earlier. From the vantage point of 1999, they looked back to the day in February 1970, when they first controlled a laser-guided bomb strike. In this book Anderegg takes us from "glimmers of hope" like that one through other major improvements in the Air Force that came between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. Always central in Anderegg's account of those changes are the people who made them. This is a very personal book by an officer who participated in the transformation he describes so vividly. Much of his story revolves around the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB), Nevada, where he served two tours as an instructor pilot specializing in guided munitions.

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.

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.

* 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.