Other books that might interest you

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  Paths of Dissent - Soldiers...

  Andrew Bacevich, Daniel A. Sjursen

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  American veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan offer invaluable firsthand perspectives on what made America’s post-9/11 wars so costly and disastrous.Twenty years of America’s Global War on Terror produced little tangible success while exacting enormous harm. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States sustained tens of thousands of casualties, expended trillions of dollars, and inflicted massive suffering on the very populations that we sought to “liberate.” Now the inclination to forget it all and move on is palpable. But there is much to be learned from the immense debacle. And those who served and fought in these wars are best positioned to teach us. Paths of Dissent collects fifteen original essays from American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan—hailing from a wide range of services, ranks, and walks of life—who have come out in opposition to these conflicts. Selected for their candor and eloquence by fellow veterans Andrew Bacevich and Daniel A. Sjursen, these soldiers vividly describe both their motivations for serving and the disillusionment that made them speak out against the system. Their testimony is crucial for understanding just how the world’s self-proclaimed greatest military power went so badly astray.A Macmillan Audio production from Metropolitan Books

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  On Writing and Failure - Or the...

  Stephen Marche

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  Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure. The best plan is to just get used to it.
  		 
  Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to what you need to continue existing as a writer, On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer’s life. Along with his own history of rejection, Marche offers stories from the history of writerly failure, from Ovid’s exile and Dostoevsky’s mock execution to James Baldwin's advice just to endure, where living with the struggle and the pointlessness of writing is the point.

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  Social Experiments in the 20th...

  Editors Charles River

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  The human psyche is one of the most complex, unpredictable, enigmatic, and therefore riveting phenomena in existence, one that psychologists have been working on deciphering since the dawn of modern science. To better understand the multifaceted intricacies of human behavior, and to unlock the secrets of the conscious mind and the subconscious, ambitious professionals in the field have conducted numerous groundbreaking – and at times, problematic – psychological experiments. The practice originated with German philosopher Wilhelm Wundt, one of the fathers of modern psychology and the creator of the world's first experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig. He sought to measure the average speed of thought processes by assigning a range of reaction time tasks to his subjects.  
  	As the nascent, yet fast-developing scientific discipline took hold around the globe, psychological experiments simultaneously diversified. As revolutionary and eye-opening as many of these experiments were, they often danced on the fine line between ethical and unethical. There was, for instance, the now-infamous Little Albert Experiment, conducted at Johns Hopkins University in 1920, in which a nine-month-old infant was deliberately manipulated into developing an irrational fear for the purpose of studying classical conditioning, and the correlation between adult fears and childhood traumas. The Monster Study, carried out at the University of Iowa in 1939, attempted to convert orphans into stutterers, half of whom were subjected to positive reinforcements and the others to negative ones. Then, there was arguably the most notorious psychological experiment in history: the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which participants were randomly assigned the character of either prisoner or prison guard. That role-playing study quickly spiraled out of control.

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  Your Elected Representatives -...

  Paul LeVota

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  Your Elected Representatives is the tale of a legislator and how he got to the State Capitol. It is filled with stories about political characters and their interactions with others, alternating between humorous and more telling situations. These are simply curious stories from your elected representative to amuse readers.

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  Voices of Baseball's Shot Heard...

  Ralph Branca, Eddie Stankey,...

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  On October 3, 1951, the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit a dramatic ninth inning game-winning home run off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds in the decisive third game of a three-game playoff to win the National League pennant. 
  It would be known in baseball lore as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World." 
  The game — the first ever televised nationally—was seen by millions of viewers across America and heard on radio by millions more, including thousands of American servicemen stationed in Korea, listening on Armed Forces Radio. 
  ©2015 Bobby Thomson (P)2015 Bobby Thomson

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  Dick Bong: The Life and Legacy...

  Editors Charles River

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  During World War II, greatly increased engine power allowed these aircraft to slice through the sky at speeds of 200 miles per hour (mph), 300 mph, or even in excess of 400 mph when flying flat-out. Service ceilings jumped to 30,000 feet, altitudes unthinkable to World War I’s aviators.  
  pilots had to adapt to countless technological improvements, and a select few truly mastered the art of dogfighting during history’s deadliest war. In the United States, the top ace came from almost literally out of nowhere. Richard “Dick” Ira Bong was born on September 24, 1920 in Superior, Wisconsin on the westernmost tip of Lake Superior, the son of Swedish immigrants. America was a very popular destination for Swedes seeking a new life during the early 20th century, and many Swedes headed for Wisconsin, with the greatest number arriving between 1880 and 1900. Dick’s father Carl, arrived in America at the age of eight, and he eventually married Dora Bryce, of Scottish-English descent. When Dick was born, they were living on a farm in the very small town of Poplar, in Douglas County, Wisconsin. Even in the 21st century, it is still diminutive, with a population of around 600.  
  	Dick’s first memorable encounter with an aircraft was as a child playing in and around the farm, and in the summer of 1928, when Dick was seven, President Calvin Coolidge had a summer holiday residence at Cedar Island Lodge on the Brule River by Brule, another very small town a few miles east of Poplar, down the Route 2 highway that is now known as the “Major Richard I. Bong Memorial Highway.” Most days a small silver Navy biplane filled the role of a mail plane responsible for delivering and receiving presidential correspondence, and it would fly over the Bong farmstead. This touched off a lifelong fascination that would lead to Bong shooting down 40 enemy planes in the Pacific Theater during the war, making him the country’s top ace before he had even reached the age of 25.

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