A fascinating account of one of America’s most important industries and its dangers.Throughout the early twentieth century, railroad safety steadily improved across the United States. But by the 1960s, American railroads had fallen apart, the result of a regulatory straightjacket that eroded profitability and undermined safety. Collisions, derailments, worker fatalities, and grade crossing mishaps skyrocketed, while hazmat disasters exploded into newspaper headline...

A history of the dynamic role of coal in the energy landscape of the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.In The Rise and Fall of King Coal, Mark Aldrich explores the pivotal role of coal in the historical energy landscape of the United States. Meticulously researched and clearly written, this analysis of the rise, dominance, and eventual decline of coal as a primary fuel source traces its evolution from the late eighteenth century t...

For most of the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, railroads dominated American transportation. They transformed life and captured the imagination. Yet by 1907 railroads had also become the largest cause of violent death in the country, that year claiming the lives of nearly twelve thousand passengers, workers, and others. In Death Rode the Rails Mark Aldrich explores the evolution of railroad safety in the United States by examining a variety of incidents: spectacular train wre...

Founded by Reuben H. Fleet in 1923, Consolidated Aircraft Corporation (later Convair) became one of the most significant aircraft manufacturers in American history. For roughly 60 years, this prolific company was synonymous with San Diego. In fact, whole sections of the city were designed to provide homes for the Convair workers and their families. These men and women were responsible for building some of the most significant aircraft in aviation history, including the PBY Catalina, B-24 L...

San Diego�s North Island is one of the most significant venues of aviation in the world. Starting in 1911, it was the home to one of the nation�s first aviation schools, founded by Glenn Curtiss, who pioneered seaplane flight. He trained the nucleus of America�s future air forces there, including Lt. Theodore Ellyson, the first naval aviator. When the United States entered World War I, the government took over the island with plans to build a training center for the nation�s armed forces. ...

2020 Audie Awards® Finalist - Audio Drama2019SOVAS Voice Arts Award—Best Voiceover in Children's Audiobook2019 SOVAS Voice Arts Award—Outstanding Production in AudiobookPuss in Boots, a fractured fairytale musical, is a tale of conquering fears, finding your truth, discovering your strengths, and standing for what you believe in, with lots of fun along the way.

A 1923 Appalachian Young Widow:In this sequel to Zetta's Dream, the words perseverance and overcoming aren't in Zetta Berghoffer's vocabulary. Instead, as a new widow and mother of two toddlers and a five-week-old baby, she lives those characteristics as she faces unwanted suitors, her gentle brother's life threatening snake bite, her stubborn father's demands, the historic American Chestnut tree blight, and daily hardships in the 1923 Appalachian Mountains. But despite Zetta's chal...

A 1923 Appalachian Young Widow: In this sequel to Zetta's Dream, the words perseverance and overcoming aren't in Zetta Berghoffer's vocabulary. Instead, as a new widow and mother of two toddlers and a five-week-old baby, she lives those characteristics as she faces unwanted suitors, her gentle brother's life threatening snake bite, her stubborn father's demands, the historic American Chestnut tree blight, and daily hardships in the 1923 Appalachian Mountains. But despite Zetta's challenges...

Tracing the roots of earth science before the Civil War.Geological Sciences in the Antebellum South by James Corgan offers a rich and revealing examination of the origins and development of geological inquiry in the American South during the decades (1796-1850s) leading up to the Civil War. At a time when scientific disciplines in the United States were still taking shape, Southern scholars, educators, and naturalists played a critical—if often ov...

Identifying “lessons learned” is not new—the military has been doing it for decades. However, members of the worldwide intelligence community have been slow to extract wider lessons gathered from the past and apply them to contemporary challenges. Learning from the Secret Past is a collection of ten carefully selected cases from post-World War II British intelligence history. Some of the cases include the Malayan Emergency, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Northern Ireland, and the lead up to the...

This is the true story behind the making of a television legend. There have been many books written about Star Trek, but never with the unprecedented access, insight and candor of authors Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross. Having covered the franchise for over three decades, they’ve assembled the ultimate guide to a television classic.The Fifty-Year Mission: Volume Two is an incisive, no-holds-barred oral history telling the story of post-Original Series Star Tr...

In literature and film the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence?This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the United States and United Kingdom from the early 1940s to the p...