John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever -- the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country's most legendary fighter aircraft -- the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.Boyd, more than any other...

One might think that after thousands of years of wondering and several hundred years of scientific investigation, human beings would have reached broad agreement about how they, and other living organisms, arrived on planet Earth, and roughly when. But this is not the case. Many millions of people in the western world (including almost half the American public) believe that we were divinely created more or less in our present form just a few thousand years ago. Many millions of others are ...

The veteran biographer provides readers with an unprecedented look at the defining characteristics that made Robert Lee Scott a uniquely American hero.Robert Lee Scott ("Scotty") was larger than life. A decorated Eagle Scout who barely graduated from high school, the young man from Macon, Georgia, with an oversize personality used dogged determination to achieve his childhood dream of becoming a famed fighter pilot.First capturing national attention during Wo...

The author of American Patriot details the life of an innovative U.S. Marine Corps veteran of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.From the earliest days of his thirty-four-year military career, Victor "Brute" Krulak displayed a remarkable facility for applying creative ways of fighting to the Marine Corps. He went on daring spy missions, was badly wounded, pioneered the use of amphibious vehicles, and masterminded the invasion of Okinawa. In K...

During the course of his military career, Bud Day won every available combat medal, escaped death on no less than seven occasions, and spent 67 months as a POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, along with John McCain. Despite sustained torture, Day would not break. He became a hero to POWs everywhere -- a man who fought without pause, not a prisoner of war, but a prisoner at war.Upon his return, passed over for promotion to Brigadier General, Day retired. But years later, with his chil...

Ed Rasimus straps the reader into the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber in his engaging account of the Rolling Thunder campaign in the skies over North Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1968, more than 330 F-105s were lost—the highest loss rate in Southeast Asia—and many pilots were killed, captured, and wounded because of the Air Force’s disastrous tactics. The descriptions of Rasimus’s one hundred missions, some of the most dangerous of the conflict, will satisfy anyone addicted to...

Second lieutenant Dick Curtis arrived in Italy in May 1944–twenty years old and part of a shipment of P-51 Mustang fighter pilots so desperately needed that they were rushed into combat with less than thirty hours of flight time in their new high-performance aircraft.Six of the twelve pilots assigned to the 52nd Fighter Group were shot down in the first two weeks. By his ninth mission, Curtis was the only one still flying. A maverick, he barely escaped court-martial with his high-f...

This is a fighter pilot's story of eight memorable months from May to December 1940. When the Germans were blitzing their way across France, Pilot Officer Tom Neil had just received his first posting to 249 Squadron.Nineteen years old, fresh from training at Montrose on Hawker Audax biplanes he was soon to be pitch forked into the maelstrom of air fighting on which the survival of Britain was to depend. By the end of the year he had shot down 13 enemy aircraft, seen many of his fri...

This instant Sunday Times bestseller tells the story of two fighter pilots whose remarkable encounter during World War II became the stuff of legend.Five days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a twenty-one-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. Suddenly a German Messerschmitt fighter pulled up on the bomber's tail - the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking hard science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years.What would happen if the world were ending?A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyo...

"[An] intimate account of a Forward Air Controller working with the Special Forces on their secret operations in South Vietnam and Laos . . . Don't miss it!" (John Prados, author of Storm Over Leyte).Originally published in 1991, this classic work has now been revised and updated with additional photos. It is the story of how, in Vietnam, an elite group of Air Force pilots fought a secret air war in Cessna 0-2 and OV-10 Bronco prop planes—flying as low as t...

Combat helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War flew each mission facing the possibility of imminent death. Begun as a series of attempted letters to the Department of Veterans Affairs, this compelling memoir of an aircraft commander in the 116th Assault Helicopter Company--"The Hornets"--relates his experience of the war in frank detail.From supporting the 25th Infantry Division's invasion of Cambodia, to flying the lead aircraft in the 101st Airmobile Division's pivotal Operation Lam...