“What is a stroke?” This is the question that plagues Ron Smith as he emerges from the carpet bombing of his brain. The Defiant Mind: Living Inside a Stroke is a first-person account of a massive ischemic stroke to the brain stem. Smith takes the reader inside the experience and shows how recuperation happens ― the challenges of communication, the barriers to treatment, the frustrations of being misunderstood and written off, the role of memory in recovering identity, the power of continui...

A Bomber Command book with a difference. Rear Gunner Pathfinders is the story of the air war over Germany as seen from the small Perspex bubble of a 'Tail-End Charlie' rear gunner in a Lancaster. Flying firstly with 626 squadron, and later 156 Pathfinder squadron, Ron Smith flew 65 operations and recorded them with the intensity brought on by the isolation of being cocooned in his lonely gun turret.

You have asked questions that no lab can settle. Should you pull the lever if it saves 5 lives and ends 1. Is the person who wakes up with no memory of yesterday still you. Could your entire life be a simulation you cannot detect. This book puts 100 of those questions on the table, not to give you the answer key, but to train the muscle that finds answers under pressure.Each chapter is a short, vivid scene followed by the tug of war it creates in your mind. You step onto the footbr...

A troubled young man steps through the back door of a shop in a small town on a blistering August day. In a rampage that lasts less than 60 seconds, he kills six men and then himself. Maesie Mattsen is the only survivor of the killing spree, but the horror she witnessed has made her too afraid to leave the sanctuary of her backyard. Soon, she will have no choice.Fearing how their neighbors will treat them, the parents of the killer also feel like prisoners in their home. They exper...

The wedding that Thanksgiving weekend 1958 in Chicago should never have happened. Venus Ballesteros should have been on her way back to the Philippines. Hiro Tanamachi should have died in the war.Somehow, the man who had trained to die as a suicide submarine pilot in the Japanese Navy, and the woman whose hometown had been occupied by the Japanese, met 8,000 miles away from their homelands.

An autobiography of my love of the ocean and how my first contact in moving to a beach town was at 13 years old. From the beginning I was in love with the sand feeling, the smell of the ocean water and smell of the sand, the waves and boats. I always had boats through my lifetime (15 boats). I explored close islands and rivers first and then expanded to fishing 100 miles offshore and rivers/islands just as far away. Sleeping on my boat to explore the new land and people.Eventually ...

After a half century of farming, an old man takes one last walk across his land.

Moving effortlessly from Virginia to Italy and beyond, Ron Smith’s new volume responds with a range of emotions from humor to horror and with a variety of forms from the sonnet to visually expressive organic shapes. The book’s forty-three pieces gather themselves into three flights that hover above and touch down among the politics of memory and the psychology of beauty. With inspiration drawn from memoir, myth, history, fiction, and the visual arts, That Beauty in the Trees prese...

The acquisition and procurement of major weapons systems is fraught with difficulties. They tend to be delivered late, over budget and unable to meet requirements. This Element provides an economic analysis of why this happens. Market structure, demand by the military and supply by the arms firms, shapes the conduct of the agents and generates the poor performance observed. The military are trying to counter an evolving threat, subject to a budget constraint, high R&D costs and new technol...

Just before a man reports to prison, he and his sons have to deal with a dead horse.

St. Thomas' Roman Catholic Church in Keith, Banffshire Scotland, is a very attractive building with a fascinating history. The majority of the finance for the construction came from King Charles X of France, and the huge oil painting that is the altar piece was painted by the royal painter, Francois Dubois. Built in 1831, the Church sits on the highest point in Keith, and its copper dome is a landmark. This book provides a glimpse into the history of this magnificent church, the various pr...

This book describes the heritage and development of the entire Piper Cherokee family; its safety and ownership characteristics; internal and external details; and a range of special variants from STOL modifications and new engines to seaplanes and tailwheel conversions. The hugely successful Piper PA-28 was produced and sold as a direct competitor to the Cessna 172. Initially produced with a rectangular wing planform and fixed undercarriage, it was available with installed powers ranging f...