Civil Air Transport (CAT), founded in China after World War II by Claire Chennault and Whiting Willauer, was initially a commercial carrier specializing in air freight. Its role quickly changed as CAT became first a paramilitary adjunct of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, then the CIA's secret "air force" in Korea, then "the most shot-at airline in the world" in French Indochina, and eventually becoming reorganized as Air America at the height of the Vietnam War. William M. Leary's detai...

Includes 14 illustrationsOf all the Army Air Forces' many operations in the Second World War, none was more demanding or important than those supporting the activity of resistance groups fighting the Axis powers. The special operations supporting the Yugoslavian partisans fighting the forces of Nazism in the Balkans required particular dedication and expertise. Balkan flying conditions demanded the best of flying skills, and the tenacious German defenses in that troubled region comp...

Although I wrote this book from a believer’s viewpoint, I tried to be as objective as possible. Above all, I am a seeker of truth. Not truth from a worldview, or truth according to the individual. I believe there is a higher truth, an absolute truth. And I believe truth is found only in the Bible and in the person of Jesus.

Provides for the first time a complete and dispassionate history of the most discussed and least known agency in the history of the American RepublicIn late 1974 the U.S. Senate Select Committee on the CIA, headed by Frank Church of Idaho, began collecting documents and materials to buttress the committee hearings on the CIA’s role and activities that were to begin in the fall of 1975. Among the materials prepared for the Church Committee is History of the Cent...

They were the forgotten commanders of World War II. While the names of Bradley and Patton became household words for Americans, few could identify Krueger or Eichelberger. They served under General Douglas MacArthur, a military genius with an enormous ego who dominated publicity from the Southwest Pacific during the American advance from Australia, through New Guinea, to the Philippines. While people at home read about the great victories that were won by "MacArthur's navy" and "MacArthur'...

Playwright Gil Landau is finally experiencing a Broadway smash after many years of draught and disaster. Gil has finally produced an overnight sensation, but his reverie quickly turns to panic when rumors begin circulating about the questionable authorship of his play. Adding to the mix is an unscrupulous agent, a boozy leading lady, and Gil's estranged son, who is recovering from a nervous breakdown after attempting to leap from the top of a building.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cas...

The American people are frustrated with their government-dismayed by a series of high-profile failures (Iraq, Katrina, the financial meltdown) that seems to just keep getting longer. Yet our nation has a proud history of great achievements: victory in World War II, our national highway system, welfare reform, the moon landing.We need more successes like these to reclaim government's legacy of competence. In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, William Eggers and John O'Leary explain ho...

The population of Wales is the product of successive waves of immigration. During the industrial revolution many diverse groups were attracted into Wales by the economic opportunities it offered – notably Irish people, black and minority ethnic sailors from many parts of the world, and people from continental Europe. More recently, there has been immigration from the New Commonwealth as well as refugees from wars and oppression in several parts of the world. This volume engages with this e...

In 2003, Methodists celebrated the 300th anniversary of the birth of their founder, John Wesley. Today, there are more than 300 Methodist denominations in 140 nations. Covering the activities of this group that plays an important role in the ecumenical movement through its many social and charitable activities in world affairs, this book offers more than 400 entries that describe important events, doctrines, and the church founders, leaders, and other prominent figures who have made notabl...

The New York Times Bestseller2014 American Book Award WinnerWinner of the Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction“An indispensable, paradigm-shifting new history of the war...All these decades later, Americans still haven't drawn the right lesson from Vietnam.” —San Francisco ChronicleBased on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history o...

America is in trouble. We face four major challenges on which our future depends, and we are failing to meet them—and if we delay any longer, soon it will be too late for us to pass along the American dream to future generations.In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, offer both a wake-up call and a call to collective action. They analyze the four challenges we fac...

In a tour de force, prize-winning New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers traces the invention of the assault rifle, following the miniaturization of rapid-fire arms from the American Civil War, through WWI, Vietnam, to present day Afghanistan when Kalashnikovs and their knock-offs number as many as 100 million—enough for one out of seventy people on earth.At a secret arms-design contest in Stalin’s Soviet Union, army technicians submitted a stubby rifle with...