At the height of World War II, a B-24 Liberator bomber vanished with its crew while on a training mission over upstate New York. The final hours and ultimate resting place of pilot Keith Ponder and seven other US aviators aboard the plane remain mysteries to this day. The tale is at once a compelling instance of loss on the World War II American home front and a more extensive, largely unreported history. Ponder—a twenty-one-year-old from rural Mississippi—and his crew were tragically unex...

In Under the Surface**, Tom Wilber weaves a narrative tracing the consequences of shale gas development in northeast Pennsylvania and central New York through the perspective of various stakeholders**. Wilber's evenhanded treatment explains how the revolutionary process of fracking has changed both access to our domestic energy reserves and the lives of people living over them. He gives a voice to all constituencies, including farmers and landowne...

Running from southern West Virginia through eastern Ohio, across central and northeast Pennsylvania, and into New York through the Southern Tier and the Catskills, the Marcellus Shale formation underlies a sparsely populated region that features striking landscapes, critical watersheds, and a struggling economic base. It also contains one of the world's largest supplies of natural gas, a resource that has been dismissed as inaccessible-until recently. Technological developments that combin...

In Vanishing Point**, award winning journalist and author Tom Wilber pieces together the largely forgotten story of the bomber,** Getaway Gertie**, and an eclectic group of enthusiasts who have spent years searching for it.**At the height of World War II, a B-24 Liberator bomber vanished with its crew while on a training mission over upstate New York. The final hours and ultimate resting place of pilot Keith Ponde...

2023 Winner of the Gold Nautilus Book Award!Spirituality is the Final Frontier for ScienceContrary to popular belief, not all scientists are materialists fervently discounting the spiritual. Science, Being, & Becoming shares interviews with some of the world's foremost scientists who recount their own transpersonal, metaphysical, and mystical experiences and how those experiences transformed them and their scientific work.This grou...

A fresh look at the how US troops played a part in the resistance of US troops to the American war in VietnamEven if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW comi...

A true tale of changing New York by Franz Lidz, whose Unstrung Heroes is a classic of hoarder lore.Homer and Langley Collyer moved into their handsome brownstone in white, upper-class Harlem in 1909. By 1947, however, when the fire department had to carry Homer's body out of the house he hadn't left in twenty years, the neighborhood had degentrified, and their house was a fortress of junk: in an attempt to preserve the past, Homer and Langley held on to everything they touc...

If the opera world is full of “intrigue, double meanings, and devious dramatics,” then no place exemplifies this more than the world-famous Metropolitan Opera, where politics, ambition, and oversized egos have traditionally taken center stage along with some of the world’s richest music. Drawing on her fifteen years as its press representative, Johanna Fiedler explodes the traditional secrecy that surrounds the Met in this wonderfully entertaining account of its tumuluous history.F...

In 1791, shortly after the United States won its independence, George Washington personally asked Pierre Charles L’Enfant—a young French artisan turned American revolutionary soldier who gained many friends among the Founding Fathers—to design the new nation's capital. L’Enfant approached this task with unparalleled vigor and passion; however, his imperious and unyielding nature also made him many powerful enemies. After eleven months, Washington reluctantly dismissed L’Enfant from the pro...

A shocking true story of corruption and crime in the ranks of the NYPD in the worst police scandal since the revelations of Fred SerpicoIn the 1970s, New York City's 77th Precinct was known as "the Alamo." In Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, Brooklyn—neighborhoods notorious for drugs and violent crime—some of the worst criminals wore police uniforms and carried badges. Henry Winter was a good cop when he first entered the infamous 77th station house that was al...

The development of clean, sustainable energy systems is one of the pre-eminent issues of our time. Most projections indicate that combustion-based energy conversion systems will continue to be the predominant approach for the majority of our energy usage, and gas turbines will continue to be important combustion-based energy conversion devices for many decades to come, used for aircraft propulsion, ground-based power generation, and mechanical-drive applications. This book compiles the key...

The friendly, relaxed atmosphere of the North Country belies a dark and sordid history: a time when it seemed that every city had its red-light district and every hamlet its brothel. Revisit an enigmatic period fraught with pistol duels and "tramp camps;" hermits on the run, "wild man" sightings and horse thieves. Local author Cheri Farnsworth has carefully researched and compiled the region's most wicked stories here, like the Potsdam man who literally scared his wife to death, the woman ...