With echoes of Rear Window, award-winning Brendan DuBois’ new thriller finds defense analyst Lewis Cole trapped and under siege in his beachfront home. In his eleventh outing, Lewis Cole—former Department of Defense research analyst—is “hard aground” at his beachfront home, recovering from major surgery. Alone at night, he’s convinced he’s hearing someone breaking into his home, and during the day, he’s harassed by genealogy researchers. Then a local gang involved in the highly lucrative and dangerous heroin business brutally make their appearance known. The unexplained murder of a local antiques dealer and historian then kicks off a long, bloody trail of old history and feuds, bringing Lewis and his historical home right into the center of the violent opioid epidemic, where no one is safe—and no one will be spared.
Three intertwined stories highlighting the many challenges the US Navy faced during strategic and material evolution Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution following the end of the Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century. The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts. The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of World War I, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little know missions and the sudden destruction of the ship by a storm surge in the Caribbean serves as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau. Jampoler concludes with an account of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.
The work covers military signaling and the weather service. The latter brand was transferred in 1890, to the Weather Bureau, organized under the Dept. of Agriculture.
The work covers military signaling and the weather service. The latter brand was transferred in 1890, to the Weather Bureau, organized under the Dept. of Agriculture.
