Since I was old enough to get around under my own power, I wanted to be a pilot, a result of idol-worshiping my mother’s brother, Orvis M. Nelson, president of Transocean Airlines. His influence led to my being named a Distinguished Military Graduate in Air Force ROTC, navigator school (sadly, my eyes were slightly myopic), bombardier school (145 Vietnam War combat missions); then later a civilian private & commercial pilot with instrument and multi-engine ratings, and Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI). After settling for a business career rather than airline pilot, I now vicariously pursue my first love through writing.
My Uncle Orvis Nelson founded Transocean Airlines in 1946 (during the Korean War; the world’s largest non-scheduled carrier) and ever since I have been fascinated by airline pioneers. Rickenbacker was a celebrated race car driver, 26-victory World War One fighter pilot, Medal of Honor winner, Rickenbacker Cars automotive designer, owner/operator of the Indianapolis Speedway, and long-time president of Eastern Airlines.
"My life has been filled with adventures that have brought me face to face with death." So begins his book; no idle boast, including 24 days stranded on a flimsy Pacific raft and a terrible, disfiguring airline crash. Rickenbacker tells his story in a pleasing, readable style, though seldom missing an opportunity to toot his own horn. No matter—if ever a flyer earned that right, it was Captain Eddie.
I started my career in Washington D.C., where my first job involved conducting strategy meetings with senior civilian and military policy officials regarding potential military conflicts around the world. At the time I was struck by the extent to which senior policymakers worried about whether they would be able to garner and sustain public support for U.S. overseas military operations. This concern often dominated our meetings. It ultimately set me on my course as a scholar, where much of my work has focused on trying to understand what average people think about the world, why they believe what they do, and whether and how their attitudes affect leaders’ decision-making in crisis situations.
This is one of the most comprehensive books on the question of how Americans think about war. Berinsky reviews public opinion on every major war since World War II. He persuasively refutes most existing explanations for public opinion regarding these conflicts, while showing that Americans’ responses to foreign policy events are not really unique to foreign policy. Rather, Americans mostly respond to wars the way they respond to most other political issues. One of the most impressive aspects of the book is the vast trove of previously unknown public opinion data from World War II that Berinsky uncovers. This is a unique window into one of America’s defining military conflicts. We learn that, contrary to the received wisdom, Americans responded to World War II in much the same way as they did during more recent conflicts.
From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history - but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this ground breaking revelation, In "Time of War" explodes conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adam J. Berinsky argues that public response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics - such as what they cost in lives and resources - than by the…
James Church is the pseudonym of a former intelligence officer, who specialized in North Korea.
His many mysteries (as well as articles published in 38 North), involving a laconic, solitary, but brilliant North Korean investigator (Inspector O), expertly capture North Korea’s sense of danger, menace, and survival – but also humanity – in a totalitarian world, where a wrong action or word can have devastating consequences.
In this, his first novel, the author explores a series of unusual events and cold cases, drawing Inspector O into investigations, espionage, and danger in a world where nothing is as it appears on the surface. In an early chapter, an intelligence officer interrogates Inspector O, telling him, “Just a nice narrative, a bedtime story.
Clean and simple. I don’t need anything too Oriental.” But Church’s novel is intricate and full of ambiguity – nothing is clean or simple.
Sit on a quiet hillside at dawn among the wildflowers; take a picture of a car coming up a deserted highway from the south. Simple orders for Inspector O, until he realizes they have led him far, far off his department's turf and into a maelstrom of betrayal and death. North Korea's leaders are desperate to hunt down and eliminate anyone who knows too much about a series of decades-old kidnappings and murders - and Inspector O discovers too late he has been sent into the chaos.This is a world where nothing works as it should, where the crimes of…
From childhood on, I’ve been drawn to storytellers, especially those who use their imagination to captivate and question. My favorite stories twist and turn, and throw light on the every day to reveal what is inexplicable, weird, wondrous, and often heartrending. My taste runs wide, and I could list dozens of favorite collections. Having released my own debut book of stories during the pandemic, I learned firsthand how difficult it can be to find readers for story collections, especially when those collections are published by smaller presses. For that reason, I’ve chosen five recent debuts from masterful authors I hope more readers will discover.
Caroline Kim’s The Prince of Mournful Thoughts is packed with stories that juggle humor and heartbreak. The book, set in California, Korea, and France, hosts a cast of rich and complex characters. Kim plumbs the experiences of Koreans and Korean-Americans with sensitivity and a fluidity that makes for a rich reading experience. “Lucia, Russell and Me,” one of my favorite pieces, follows an irreverent adolescent girl, whose family has just moved to America. That story, like the others, is filled with arresting details and characters that shift and change in unexpected ways. Other terrific stories are the genre-bending, historical titular story, and the futuristic piece about a suburban housewife and her therapy robot. Kim is an uncanny observer of everyday life and her way of seeing makes for gratifying reading.
Exploring what it means to be human through the Korean diaspora, Caroline Kim's stories feature many voices. From a teenage girl in 1980's America, to a boy growing up in the middle of the Korean War, to an immigrant father struggling to be closer to his adult daughter, or to a suburban housewife whose equilibrium depends upon a therapy robot, each character must face their less-than-ideal circumstances and find a way to overcome them without losing themselves. Language often acts as a barrier as characters try, fail, and momentarily succeed in connecting with each other. With humor, insight, and curiosity,…
I began reading about history as a child and fell in love with the WW II aviation stories. Later in life I was able to meet many of the men I read about, interview them, and then write my books with their first person accounts. The greatest satisfaction was putting former enemies together who I could prove had fought each other. The reunions were amazing.
The true story of two men (one I knew), a son of a poor Mississippi sharecropper Jessie Brown and Thomas Hudner. Brown was the Navy’s first black pilot, and Hudner was a Medal of Honor recipient in his squadron who tried to rescue him when he was shot down at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • From America’s “forgotten war” in Korea comes an unforgettable tale of courage by the author of A Higher Call.
“In the spirit of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat comes Devotion.”—Associated Press • “Aerial drama at its best—fast, powerful, and moving.”—Erik Larson
Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy’s most famous aviation duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African…
My desire to learn about Korea was strong from an early age. When I was in elementary school in New Jersey, there was only one book about Korea in the local libraries. I remember this vividly since I borrowed it twenty times in a row. Though I was finally able to take courses on Korea in college, there was still much about Korea’s history that was frustratingly inaccessible to me because of the lack of books on the topic. I have devoted at least some of my work to producing books and other materials that will make it easier for younger generations to learn about Korean history.
It is fortunate that this book is among the growing number of Korean novels that have been translated into English. I think this is the best book at capturing the historical experience of Koreans in the twentieth century.
Cho Chong-Rae, one of South Korea’s foremost novelists, has a particular genius for depicting how the lives of complex and compelling characters were impacted by the turbulent events of Korean history.
The book is especially memorable because of its main character–a communist peasant who adopts a new identity during the Korean War and becomes a successful businessman in the South. By doing this, the novel shows that the division of the country is not just political but has also split the collective psyche of the Korean people.
In this work, the smoldering hatred of the Korean War period resurfaces decades later in the form of a ruthless quest for justice. The main character, a successful Seoul businessman, has a secret past: unknown to his wife and son, he once led another life under another name as a ruthless communist partisan. After a lifelong search, the son of one of his wartime victims discovers his true identity, then proceeds calmly and deliberately to exact a terrible revenge.
I grew up just north of Chicago, took courses at the University of Madrid (La Complutense), and graduated from Marquette University. I speak 5 languages and have written for such diverse reviews as The Journal of the American Revolution and Atlantic Coastal Kayaker. Nothing has possessed me like my father’s Navigation Case. Besides learning how this young college graduate helped pioneer the nascent aviation industry training in 11 different types of aircraft, I take pride in the astonishing role he played in American history. He was a combat pilot in the first-ever demonstration of air superiority over an enemy, leading to the greatest campaign victory in the history of the US Air Force.
This book gave me a basic understanding of the New Guinea war into which my father was sent. It gave me the framework with which I could piece together the timeline of my father’s service. It gave me an idea of the progress of the war and a context for all of his military orders, his stacks of correspondence, and all of his photos, long stored away in his Navigation Case.
In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur faced an enemy who, in the space of a few months, captured Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and, from their base at Raubaul in New Britain, threaten Australia. Upon his retreat to Australia, MacArthur hoped to find enough men and matérielfor a quick offensive against the Japanese. Instead, he had available to him only a small and shattered air force, inadequate naval support, and an army made up almost entirely of untried reservists.
Here is one of history’s most controversial commanders battling…
I enjoy military history and learning about timeframes that are less familiar to me, like the Korean War in this instance.
Shaara brings history to life by revealing events through the eyes of those experiencing it firsthand. He does not focus on the stories and myths of “heroes” or those considered to be by posterity but instead focuses on the grind of the ordinary moments suffered day by day.
The stories seem both personal and believable, the tragic and the heroic.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The master of military historical fiction turns his discerning eye to the Korean War in this riveting novel, which tells the dramatic story of the Americans and the Chinese who squared off in one of the deadliest campaigns in the annals of combat: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as Frozen Chosin.
June 1950. The North Korean army invades South Korea, intent on uniting the country under Communist rule. In response, the United States mobilizes a force to defend the overmatched South Korean troops, and together they drive the North Koreans back to their…
The story was weaved through multiple points of view, illustrating that what one thinks is happening may not be what is actually happening. There was a good deal of misdirection which kept me reading.
'DARK AND TWISTY' Riley Sager 'A JAW-DROPPING TWIST THAT I NEVER SAW COMING' Joshilyn Jackson
You'll never find her. Don't even try.
When a local mother and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, suddenly vanish, their close-knit suburban community is rocked by fear and suspicion. How could such a terrible thing have happened in their small town?
Then, eleven years later, Delilah shockingly reappears. Everyone wants to know what really happened to her. But there are secrets hidden deep in the past - and when the truth about those missing years begins to surface, no one is prepared for what they're about…
