Other books that might interest you

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  The Airborne Mafia - The...

  Robert F. Williams

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  The Airborne Mafia explores how a small group of World War II airborne officers took control of the US Army after World War II. This powerful cadre cemented a unique airborne culture that had an unprecedented impact on the Cold War US Army and beyond. 
   
   
   
  Robert F. Williams reveals the trials and tribulations this group of officers faced in order to bring about their vision. He spotlights the relationship between organizational culture, operational behavior, and institutional change in the United States Army during the Cold War, showing that as airborne officers ascended to the highest ranks of the army they transmitted their culture throughout their service in four major ways—civil-military relations, preparation for potential atomic combat, helicopter airmobility, and strategic response forces. 
   
   
   
  Experiences of training and commanding airborne divisions in World War II led these men to hold sway in army doctrine by the mid-1950s. Dominating institutional thought and imparting their values, beliefs, and norms throughout the service they enjoyed a special privilege within the group culture. Williams demonstrates this impact, privilege, and power by focusing on the paratrooper triumvirate of Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, and James Gavin and the lasting impression they made on how the US Army fought.

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  My Bipolar Backpack

  Susan Ralphe

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  In this powerful memoir Susan Ralphe employs sharp storytelling skills honed over a long  newspaper reporting career to tell her own story of long-term, heart-wrenching bipolar madness.She recounts soaring accomplishments alternating with. black periods of tenseness, brain freeze and despair.

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  Holding Onto Air - The Art and...

  Michele DeMarco

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  A top mental health writer, trauma researcher, and survivor illuminates the dual nature of loss-the science behind it and art of transforming it with a breakthrough book and truly holistic approach. 
   
  After experiencing two rare heart attacks at the age of 33-and a third a decade later, DeMarco knows trauma intimately. Trauma breaks your relationship with time by upending your expectations, fracturing your memories and identity, and destroying your innocence. 
   
  With poignant wisdom and refreshing insight DeMarco explodes traditional myths of resilience and shows what it takes to thrive through any of life's challenges. DeMarco situates meaningful challenge and loss specifically in the context of "lost innocence," and challenges common notions that we can think our way out of despair and back to a "normal" happy life when the unimaginable shatters it. 
   
  Leveraging advances in emotion science, somatic psychology, neuroscience, and trauma, Holding Onto Air brings the body and spirit into the solution, as much as the mind, and so presents a truly integrated, "whole person" approach to recovering from lost innocence and building resilience. It also makes spirit accessible for anyone of any background or belief-or no aligned belief. 
   
  More than a rudimentary map for navigating grief and loss' rocky terrain (with tired tropes and shop-worn strategies), DeMarco offers a unique and trusted guide for an arduous journey every human being will have to face-the realization of evil, pain, or mortality that occurs after a person experiences trauma.

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  Why Johnny Still Can't Read or...

  Andrew Bernstein

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  The current school system churns out millions of illiterates and mental zombies—but here's how we're going to fix it, starting today. 
   
   
   
  Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents across the nation grapple with a new and horrifying understanding of just how bad our educational system has become. It all adds up to a system that seems hopelessly, terribly, and irrevocably broken. But as an educator and author, Andrew Bernstein reminds us that American education in the nineteenth through early-twentieth century was superb. This nation once knew how to turn out the brightest, most resourceful and independent-thinking people the world had ever seen. We can do it again.

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  Black Cats of Osan - U-2 Spy...

  Rick Bishop

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  The story of the top-secret “Black Cats” who undertook dangerous long-duration high-altitude missions to provide intelligence on North Korea during the Cold War.
  
  Plying through the darkness at the very limit of the earth’s atmosphere, the U-2’s extrasensory intelligence-gathering sensors quietly intercept and redistribute mountains of information to a highly classified ground site, located at Osan Air Base, Korea. From there, the top-secret intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) products are distributed to the highest levels of command authority within the United States. Although the Dragon Lady has been in continuous service for nearly 70 years, she has always been considered a “National Asset,” with technology so sophisticated that she outlasted her “replacement”—the SR-71—decades ago.
  
  Lt. Col. (Ret.) Rick Bishop, a former U-2 pilot, takes the reader deep into the Black World of non-satellite ISR to reveal how a small detachment of 100 hand-selected personnel with only eight pilots and two aircraft became the most reliable and productive air force unit to ever utilize the Dragon Lady during the Cold War and to this day. As second-in-command of Detachment 2 (Det 2) of the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing during the mid-1980s, Rick kept a detailed journal of the daily operations that routinely launched pilots on high-altitude solo missions lasting at least nine hours. Wearing full-pressure suits similar to those utilized by the Shuttle astronauts, these missions took a physiological toll on each pilot who upon return had to coax the Lady, universally known for her treacherous landing characteristics, safely back on the ground along with the often-priceless intelligence-gathering sensors.
  
  Although the pilots were the pointy end of the spear, this is also the story of the missions that could not be accomplished without the dedicated effort from enlisted personnel and civilian company tech reps to keep the maintenance-intensive platform in the air. Along with Physiological Support Division personnel, responsible for keeping the pilot alive in their pressure suit environment during emergency situations, as well as numerous other support troops required for logistical and supply support, the unparallel success of Det 2 can only be attributed to the professional pride of the close-knit selectively manned brotherhood known as the Black Cats of Osan.

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  Jim Crow's Pink Slip - The...

  Leslie T. Fenwick

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  In 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown decision ended segregated schooling in the United States, but regrettably, as documented in congressional testimony and transcripts, it also ended the careers of a generation of highly qualified and credentialed Black teachers and principals. In the Deep South and northern border states over the decades following Brown, Black schools were illegally closed and Black educators were displaced en masse. As educational policy and leadership expert Leslie T. Fenwick deftly demonstrates, the effects of these changes stand contrary to the democratic ideals of an integrated society and equal educational opportunity for all students. 
   
   
   
  Jim Crow's Pink Slip provides a trenchant account of how tremendous the loss to the US educational system was and continues to be. The book draws the line from the past injustices to problems that the educational system grapples with today: not simply the underrepresentation of Black teachers and principals, but also salary reductions, teacher shortages, and systemic inequality. 
   
   
   
  By engaging with the complicated legacy of the Brown decision, Fenwick illuminates a crucial chapter in education history. She also offers policy prescriptions aimed at correcting the course of US education, supporting educators, and improving workforce quality and diversity.

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