The emotional, mental, and physical battles our ill-equipped Marines faced while battling the Japanese on Guadalcanal comes to life in John Bruning's book. A breathtaking amount of detail was put into the second-by-second accounts of air battles and ground attacks.
This book impacted me on a level I wasn't prepared for and I was unprepared for the end.
On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in the south Solomon Islands into an air base from which they could attack the supply lines between the U.S. and Australia. The night after the Marines landed and captured the partially completed airfield, the Imperial Navy launched a surprise night attack on the Allied fleet offshore, resulting in the worst defeat the U.S. Navy suffered…
Do you find value in today's tech? Can you imagine a world without our phones, computers, or the internet?
In the 1950s, a brilliant young man named Dudley Buck worked on creating circuitry small enough to shrink computers from massive, hulking machinery that took up entire buildings, into a device that could fit on a desk.
His supercooled "cryotron," an early microchip prototype, had the potential to give the United States a leg up in the nuclear missle arms race and the Space Race...until he (and a colleague) died suddenly. Absolutely amazing book.
Dr. Dudley Allen Buck was a brilliant young scientist on the cusp of fame and fortune when he died suddenly on May 21, 1959, at the age of 32. He was the star professor at MIT and had done stints with the NSA and Lockheed. His latest invention, the Cryotron―an early form of the microchip―was attracting attention all over the globe. It was thought that the Cryotron could guide a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles to their targets. Four weeks before Dudley Buck’s death, he was visited by a group of the Soviet Union’s top computer experts. On the…
I grew up watching Patrick Stewart on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but knew little of his life or other acting pursuits. What a delightful autobiography Stewart has crafted for us. I found the bits about his childhood particularly poignant.
'He writes as well as he acts, with insight, truth and passion' - Sir Ian McKellen
'Highly entertaining... You don't need to be a fan of Stewart the man of stage and screen to be as beguiled by the decades of professional acting that follow' - The Times
The long-awaited memoir from iconic, beloved actor and living legend Sir Patrick Stewart.
From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations in a career spanning six decades with his indelible command of stage…
An unbelievable series of events led to the establishment of the Northwest Electro-development Laboratory, later the U.S. Bureau of Mines Albany Research Center. Though the fledgling lab had difficulty securing staff due to World War II, world-renown metallurgist William J. Kroll was hired early on as a consultant after fleeing Nazi occupation. Kroll, who had pioneered a method for producing commercial titanium, worked with his core group of associates to develop malleable zirconium, just as a need arose for the little-known metal.
On the other side of the country, the petulant and abrasive Captain Rickover was working with his Naval Reactors Group to develop the world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, under the cover of extreme secrecy. But as engineers worked night and day to create a suitable form of propulsion, one problem after another cropped up. New metals were needed for the hellish nuclear environment within a reactor—metals that had never been produced in vast quantities. Enter Kroll's zirconium, and its sister metal, hafnium. The two entwined metals, once freed from each other, were exactly what Rickover was looking for.
Would the little laboratory in rural Albany, Oregon, be able to produce enough zirconium and hafnium for Rickover's ambitious project? Delve into the establishment and early years of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Albany, Oregon, and the incredible series of events during the period of 1940-1956.
