Over There in the Air tells the little known story of the contribution of Texas A&M University to early aviation in World War I. Over two thousand students served in the war in one capacity or another, and of those about 250 were involved in the newest martial development—military aviation. The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, as it was then known, was regarded as one of the top leading academic institutions in the country for contributions to the nation’s effort in the Great War. Through painstaking research—using unit records, after-action reviews, alumni newsletters, and countless other university documents—John A. Adams Jr. paints a portrait of the Aggie aviator in the Great War. Texas A&M aviators flew in European air forces, hunted German U-boats, went on scouting missions, and served as attack pilots. Adams has identified, often for the first time, those Aggies who served and follows them through training, life on the front, and the return home. While much of the World War I story occurred “over there,” just as much took place “over here.” Adams explores the home front as well as the battlefront, capturing campus life in the midst of mobilization, recruitment, and a devastating influenza epidemic that claimed as many as fifty campus lives. Over There in the Air is a riveting book about an important contribution of a university to the World War I effort. It is sure to catch the attention of all Aggies and those interested in aviation history.

With Papa off to sea and Mama despondent, Ida must go outside over there to rescue her baby sister from goblins who steal her to be a goblin's bride.

On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, ex-SEAL Coby MacKenzie is training a secret special-operations unit called Ghost Eagle 1, Team Kamehameha. On the team are Shane Waters, Will Bottoms, and Kalee Jourden. They are 16 years old. Also on the team are Eiji Ahana and Roby MacKenzie, ages 14 and 13. They were warned that they might face extreme danger. Now it's here. Black Dragon agents have slipped onto Kauai to take possession of a stolen, high-value package. Team Kamehameha's mission: intercept the package. If they fail, the Hawaiian Islands could be wiped off the face of the earth. Time is running out.

Organizations increasingly use temporary designs. Many temporary organizations are assembled by "mixing and matching" building blocks from static, bureaucratic, parent organizations into a temporary configuration. At the same time, such "mixed and matched" temporary organizations often operate under difficult and dangerous circumstances. During operations, these temporary organizations can experience numerous internal problems: ranging from friendly fire in a military context to budget and time issues in construction projects and problematic coordination in a crisis management context. This book develops insight into the relationship between a "mixing and matching" temporary design strategy and operational problems. To so do, military and crisis management contexts are systematically studied from a sociotechnical design perspective that emphasizes self-organization to develop organizational controllability. Operating Under High-Risk Conditions in Temporary Organizations demonstrates that a "mixing and matching" design strategy can be related to system failure. Furthermore, it is shown that a process of self-design emerged in which operators attempted to create ad-hoc networks for meaningful, safe and controllable operations. The analyses result in a model that shows mechanisms between characteristics of organizational design and controllability of operations. Not only does this model have relevance to the military and crisis management contexts, relevance is also demonstrated for a broader family of temporary organizations and application of sociotechnical network design theory.