A “surprisingly revealing” look at air combat, combining a WWII bombardier’s journal with a present-day perspective (Aviation News). This comprehensive look at air war over Europe during the climactic year of World War II combines firsthand experience with expert analysis. The centerpiece is a mission-by-mission diary of 1st Lt. Richard R. Ayesh, bombardier on a B-17 Flying Fortress, who flew with the 100th Bombardment Group, 13th Combat Wing of the 8th Air Force—the legendary “Bloody 100th.” He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, Croix de Guerre, and Air Medal with Four Oak Leaf Clusters, among others. This book follows Ayesh’s progress from his youth during the Great Depression in Wichita, Kansas, which was rapidly becoming the air capital of the nation, to his arrival in England as a lieutenant in a bomber crew assigned to assault the Third Reich. The author provides a look at the principles of American daylight strategic bombing, while relaying the overall military situation on the ground and in the air just after D-Day. Covering all aspects of air war in a clear, concise, yet nontechnical manner, the book covers such topics as photo-reconnaissance, munitions and bomb types, aircraft characteristics, fighter and bomber tactics, bomber formations, strategic target selection, radars, countermeasures and counter-counter measures. The unaltered diary of Lt. Ayesh is presented mission-by-mission, punctuated by tragedy and heroism, with explanations and commentary of the significance of events and actions described en route. The result is one of the most frank and exciting works on the air war over Europe to date. After Lt. Ayesh is followed on his perilous return home in U-boat infested waters, the book assesses the effectiveness of US strategy in ultimately paralyzing the Nazi war machine. Finally, the complex moral issues raised by area and city bombing are explored, with twenty-first century implications.

Blue Skies, Green Hell, a thriller written by a bush pilot’s wife, is a riveting tale set in the 1950s when pioneers of the sky flew single-engine aircraft over unforgiving wilderness and impenetrable jungle in Venezuela. Marilyn and Frank live in a place called the last frontier on the Orinoco River where he establishes a multi-aircraft service that flies supplies and medicine to remote and inaccessible communities. Together they challenge the odds and take the exhilaration of flying to new heights. Their world is fierce weather with no weather reports, aircraft with limited range radios, and planes with six basic instruments. A search and rescue effort ends when they make a forced landing in no man’s land. A flight to Miami turns sour as their twin-engine C-46 conks out over the Caribbean. Best friends die in fiery crashes. A stone age Indian appears where he shouldn’t be. This is drama from the cockpit of vintage aircraft.

A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversy Shale gas extraction—commonly known as fracking—is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet—is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent. The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell casts America’s ideas about freedom and property rights in a troubling new light, revealing how your personal choices can undermine your neighbors’ liberty, and how the exercise of individual rights can bring unintended environmental consequences for us all.

On growing up in the American South of the 1960s—an all-American white boy—son of a long line of Methodist preachers, in the midst of the civil rights revolution, and discovering the culpability of silence within the church. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for The Birmingham News. "My dad was a Methodist preacher and his dad was a Methodist preacher," writes John Archibald. "It goes all the way back on both sides of my family. When I am at my best, I think it comes from that sermon place." Everything Archibald knows and believes about life is "refracted through the stained glass of the Southern church. It had everything to do with people. And fairness. And compassion." In Shaking the Gates of Hell, Archibald asks: Can a good person remain silent in the face of discrimination and horror, and still be a good person? Archibald had seen his father, the Rev. Robert L. Archibald, Jr., the son and grandson of Methodist preachers, as a moral authority, a moderate and a moderating force during the racial turbulence of the '60s, a loving and dependable parent, a forgiving and attentive minister, a man many Alabamians came to see as a saint. But was that enough? Even though Archibald grew up in Alabama in the heart of the civil rights movement, he could recall few words about racial rights or wrongs from his father's pulpit at a time the South seethed, and this began to haunt him. In this moving and powerful book, Archibald writes of his complex search, and of the conspiracy of silence his father faced in the South, in the Methodist Church and in the greater Christian church. Those who spoke too loudly were punished, or banished, or worse. Archibald's father was warned to guard his words on issues of race to protect his family, and he did. He spoke to his flock in the safety of parable, and trusted in the goodness of others, even when they earned none of it, rising through the ranks of the Methodist Church, and teaching his family lessons in kindness and humanity, and devotion to nature and the Earth. Archibald writes of this difficult, at times uncomfortable, reckoning with his past in this unadorned, affecting book of growth and evolution.

"Prayer of the Blue Skies" BY Gabriel Zeldis

From the bestselling author of the hit Netflix series, Virgin River Three friends journey to discover the value of family, second chances, and choosing to live your best life in this fan-favorite romance by #1 New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr. Nikki survived a terrible marriage and a worse divorce, but now suddenly has custody of her kids again. Dixie is through with looking for love when all she gets are expensive gifts and heartache. Carlisle is trying to move forward from a bad relationship that has destroyed his trust. When Nikki, Dixie and Carlisle are offered the chance to join a new airline in Las Vegas, they don’t hesitate. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, these three friends are starting over in search of their own blue skies. Previously published.

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