"The telling is one only a brother could achieve. Thad's collaboration with wordsmith Glencoe is seamless in style, tone, and clarity throughout as they effectively weave small personal experiences into a coherent tapestry of Mark's character. The book excels at showing how combat deaths affect families, friends, and fellow service personnel and how such losses can inspire others."--Kirkus Reviews.
“A fabulous read, filled with heroism, history, and hi-jinks, as author William F. Sine recounts his life as an Air Force Pararescue Jumper” (Readers’ Favorite). US Air Force Pararescue is the most skillful and capable rescue force in the world, taking on some of the most dangerous rescue missions imaginable. PJs (short for para-jumpers), are members of an elite unit whose commando skills are so wide-reaching they often seem like something out of science fiction. They routinely tackle perilous operations that are beyond the capabilities of other rescue organizations, and sometimes dare the seemingly impossible. Since their inception in 1947, PJs have saved more than thirty thousand lives. They can pluck near-frozen climbers off jagged mountaintops and recover shot-down jet pilots stranded deep in hostile territory. In the dead of night, the PJs parachute into ominous, black, twenty-foot-tall waves to save distressed seamen, and they brave the cruelest and most desolate deserts to recover victims. US Air Force pararescuemen have played a prominent role in every armed conflict since the Korean War, rescuing thousands of soldiers from behind enemy lines. Guardian Angel provides a rare glimpse at a PJ’s mind-blowing adventures. You follow Sgt. Sine’s trek across exotic lands and share his encounters with mysterious cultures. Learn what it takes to lower from a helicopter onto the slippery decks of storm-tossed ships to rescue dying sailors. Feel what it’s like to be caught in the middle of a bomb blast so powerful that it tears high-rise buildings in half, and flattens armored vehicles hundreds of yards away. Soar high above towering jungle trees and experience the danger of swinging on a slim cable below a helicopter, while performing a mid-air rescue of a pilot, dangling from his chute a hundred feet above a mountain slope. Go to war in Afghanistan and parachute onto a nocturnal battlefield, surrounded by land mines, to help a mortally wounded soldier. This is a deadly serious business: When things go wrong, they can go terribly wrong. Aircraft crash into mountainsides, killing all onboard, while some PJs live through horrendous helicopter crashes only to struggle with freezing temperatures, snapped limbs and torn flesh in a desperate fight for survival. This book presents true stories of uncommon courage told from the perspective of the actual men in the arena. PJs belong to an exclusive brotherhood and forge unbreakable bonds of loyalty, commitment, and sacrifice. They do these things for their country, to protect their brothers in arms, and to honor their motto: “That Others May Live.”
From award-winning journalist and combat veteran Michael Hirsh comes the thrilling inside story of the Air Force’s pararescue operations in Afghanistan. The first journalist to be embedded with an Air Force combat unit in the War on Terrorism, Hirsh flew from Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, with the 71st Rescue Squadron to their expeditionary headquarters at a secret location in Central Asia. Unparalleled access to the PJs, as well as to the courageous men and women who fly them where they have to go, often under enemy fire, allowed Hirsh to uncover incredible stories of courage.
Mental toughness is the key to endurance events and business success. Robert Hamilton Owens is a master of the mental game - he completed 5 major endurance events in one year- at the age of 65. This former Air Force Pararescueman shares his compelling stories of overcoming physical and mental pain and how he accomplished so much on one year.
This is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father, organic chemist Albert Hofmann, Ph.D. He traces LSD's path from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition. In LSD: My Problem Child, we follow Dr. Hofmann's trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD, and listen in as he corresponds with other notable figures about his remarkable discovery. Underlying it all is Dr. Hofmann's powerful conclusion that mystical experiences may be our planet's best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend "the wonder, the mystery of the divine, in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people." More than sixty years after the birth of Albert Hofmann's problem child, his vision of its true potential is more relevant, and more needed, than ever.
Almost as soon as the second hijacked 767 struck the south tower of the world trade center, Air Force Combat Controllers began to report to their bases and pack their gear. Spread around the world in special tactics squadrons, these airmen would provide the lightly armed U.S. Army Special Forces teams with a number of capabilities that would turn them into world-class killing machines." John D. Gresham Author, "Air Force Combat Controllers at War" Afghanistan 2001 "These single Americans had the power to conjure lightning bolts out of the sky......... ....what happened in Afghanistan is one of the most extraordinary stories in military history." Mark Bowden Author, "Blackhawk Down" Somalia, 1999 "Individually, they are specially selected, specially trained, and, in support of special operations, almost daily bring American airpower to bear on our nations enemies. Indeed, they are very remarkable warriors, and this book will help many understand why so many of us hold our Combat Controllers in such incredibly high regard." Dr. James G. Roche Secretary of the United States Air Force 2001 - 2005 "if you asked what tool of the trade would be the very last they would leave behind, you might be surprised at the answer. You would likely hear that it is not a tool that makes one nervous when it isnt there, but rather a capability that is not organic to a troop of Delta Operators or Navy SEALs" "Just because you are the best of the best does not mean you are the best at everything. Any Delta operator can vouch for the capabilities of the air force combat controllers, and very rarely goes on a hit without the men who wear the scarlet berets." Dalton Fury Delta Force Commander, Tora Bora, December 2001 Author, "Kill Bin Laden" - 2008
