Once touted as the �West Point of the air� in the pre�Air Force Academy years, Randolph Field/Air Force Base is famous for its Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, its iconic Administration Building (nicknamed the �Taj Mahal�), and its rectangular layout. Allowed by the Army hierarchy to design its own installation from the ground up, the Army Air Corps hit a home run in design uniqueness and functionality. When the Corps of Engineers built the base, working from 1928 to 1931, it was its...

A Dan Josselyn Memorial PublicationDiscover the stories, structures, and spirit that shaped life along America’s greatest river.Specialists from archaeology, ethnohistory, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology bring their varied points of view to this subject in an attempt to answer basic questions about the nature and extent of social change within the time period. The scholars' overriding concerns include presentation ...

A groundbreaking investigation into the events of the Watergate Scandal, complete with fascinating new material, all “exhaustively researched” in the author’s customary style (The New York Observer)While Richard Nixon's culpability for Watergate has long been established, what's truly remarkable is that after almost fifty years, conventional accounts of the scandal still don't address Nixon's motive. Why was President Nixon willing to risk his reelection w...

A pictorial history of the legendary Lockheed spy plane, written by one of its pilots and "filled to the brim with information and revelation" ( Seattle Post Intelligencer Travel for Aircraft blog).At the height of the Cold War in 1964, President Johnson announced a new aircraft dedicated to strategic reconnaissance. The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane flew more than three-and-a-half times the speed of sound, so fast that no other aircraft could catch it...

More than five decades have passed since Jane Jacobs wrote her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and since a front page headline in the New York Times read, "Cars Choking Cities as 'Urban Sprawl' Takes Over." Yet sprawl persists, and not by mistake. It happens for a reason. As an activist and a scholar, Benjamin Ross is uniquely placed to diagnose why this is so. Dead End traces how the ideal of a safe, green, orderly retreat where hardworking ...

In At the Edge of Space, Milton O. Thompson tells the dramatic story of one of the most successful research aircraft ever flown. The first full-length account of the X-15 program, the book profiles the twelve test pilots (Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle, Scott Crossfield, and the author among them) chosen for the program. Thompson has translated a highly technical subject into readable accounts of each pilot's participation, including many heroic and humorous anecdotes and highlighting ...

Much of the shoreline of Lake Superior was still wilderness when the author made this journey to the rocks of the Lake that were named for the objects men could see in them. Hunting, fishing and exploration with local guides to add color to the story.

"If you only have room in your collection for one book on WWII-era warbird wreck histories and recoveries, then it should be this one. . . . Fascinating." —Alan Griffith, author of Consolidated MessAviation historian Nicholas A. Veronico has been investigating and writing about aircraft wrecks for many years. His website, wreckchasing.com, is the go-to source for enthusiasts who want to know more about how to locate vintage airplane wrecks and then tell the...

This concise, but comprehensive, story of San Diego is the sisth in the HarborTown History series. From its early history as a tribal homeland and its days of Mexican ranchos through the parade of entrepreneurs who transformed it into the lovely city it is today, its history is one of dreams, failures, trials, triumphs.From its earliest mission days to entrepreneurial failures and triumphs, San Diego's story is rich with tales of its amazing Hotel del Coro...

First published in the 1960s and long out of print, Edmund Cosgrove recounts the lives of Canada's outstanding pilots and their exploits in the two world wars. From the brilliant individualists who flew in the First World War to the tough and dedicated bomber crews of the Second, this is the story of Canadian airmen and their remarkable contribution to the war effort. An essential book for any aviation and history enthusiast, the superbly readable original text that made this book a classi...

The Northrop N-63 was an unconventional VTOL turboprop tailsitter aircraft proposal submitted to the US Navy's convoy fighter competition of 1950, which ultimately produced the Convair XFY-1 Pogo and Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon. It was a single-seat high performance fighter designed to protect convoy vessels from attack by enemy aircraft, and for vertical unassisted takeoff from, and landings on, small platform areas afloat or ashore. The N-63 featured a straight wing with pronounced dihedral an...

Ten years before the start of the American Revolution, backcountry settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont launched their own defiant bid for economic independence and political liberty. The Regulator Rebellion of 1766–71 pitted thousands of farmers, many of them religious radicals inspired by the Great Awakening, against political and economic elites who opposed the Regulators' proposed reforms. The conflict culminated on May 16, 1771, when a colonial militia defeated more than 2,000 arme...