From Golden Valley Aero News""December 1982 Joseph B. Conner Joe writes "Conner's Corner" every month. He has been writing for Livermore Valley Airmen's Association's newsletter for several years, and his stories are now included in Golden Valley Aero News. Joe works for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and commutes""by car""from Tracy, California. In Joe's stories, we learn about Fidelia, the Varga he uses when he cruises around the valley on his excursions. Fidelia is not just any Varga. To Joe, she is a real she, an airplane with soul and personality. Reading Joe's stories, you get this feeling that he is talking about a real live being. "Conner's Corner" describes real events, things that have happened to Joe on his flights. They are cute stories so well told by Joe in his easygoing, "talking" style. Many of them have an undertone of philosophy that adds a pleasant color to the events Joe is describing. He writes in such a manner that the reader actually gets the feeling of being the pilot or passenger. Most enjoyable reading.
A poetic and nuanced exploration of the human experience of flight that reminds us of the full imaginative weight of our most ordinary journeys—and reawakens our capacity to be amazed. The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight—a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity—to the realm of the mundane. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to reimagine what we—both as pilots and as passengers—are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity that affords us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.
From NPR correspondent O' Brien comes this thrilling Young Readers' edition that celebrates a little-known slice of history wherein tenacious, trailblazing women braved all obstacles to achieve greatness in the skies. Photos.
The unexpurgated, hilarious and unflinching history of computers, of the lunatics who create them, and of the idiots who use them, retold in cartoon strips by Mel Croucher and Robin Evans. Great Moments In Computing is the longest-running, most widely read and best loved computer cartoon strip in the world, and this unique collection contains every single episode ... along with unpublished and previously censored versions, and the behind-the-scenes secrets of how it all really happened.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This is history at its most immediate and moving…A marvelous and memorable book.” —Jon Meacham “Remarkable…A priceless civic gift…On page after page, a reader will encounter words that startle, or make him angry, or heartbroken.” —The Wall Street Journal “Had me turning each page with my heart in my throat…There’s been a lot written about 9/11, but nothing like this. I urge you to read it.” —Katie Couric The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001—a panoramic narrative woven from voices on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma. Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower to The 9/11 Commission Report. But one perspective has been missing up to this point—a 360-degree account of the day told through firsthand. Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet. Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker under the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid. More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger’s last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from trying to rescue their colleagues. At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.
H. G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Bach, Roald Dahl, Len Deighton and seven other famous writers explore the novelty, the adventure, and the skill of flying, in entertaining stories ranging from the fantastic to the factual.
Geoffrey Hart gives us an entertaining account of his life experiences; definitely biographical, comprising short excerpts describing prominent elements that governed his life. He describes his preschool experiences, his working life including being a handyman, with skills as varied as working as a carpenter, a delivery driver, working in the building industry and for the majority of his working life; he worked as a postman for the Royal Mail in the UK. Always something of a rebel; he dropped out of school to pursue a multitude of careers. With a wry sense of humour, he gives the reader a fresh take on a multitude of topics. He provides the reader with his personal insights into such diverse topics as marriage, adultery, golf, motor cars, and particularly shows his deep love of animals.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK • The unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost: an “epic trip—through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood—and you’ll relish every minute” (People). After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.
