Could an unobtrusive, skinny, bookish teacher who loves classical music and poetry become a fighter pilot in one of the bloodiest theaters of war our country has known? Could this modest self-described dreamer become the pilot of a Corsair F4U, the fastest plane built—equipped with six menacing, Browning .50 caliber machine guns, a primitive navigation system and a 16-cylinder engine so powerful that it could spin the plane over and crash if accelerated too fast? How far did Wally Thomson, the teacher, travel to become Captain Wallace B. Thomson the war hero of his hometown, Hackensack, New Jersey? In this memoir, Wally describes vivid wartime details that are often insightful, humorous or critical to a life or death decision. He also stands back to provide context for his role in the war effort, describing some of the most relevant battles preceding his arrival in the Pacific. And he reflects on some of the strategies, tactics, mistakes and successes of the Allies and the Japanese while he explains the tasks at hand—flying a powerful aircraft to carry out his missions, leading his men to attack the enemy and to survive to fly another day. Through his telling, we recognize the friendships, fears, romance, humor and the courage he witnessed in the Pacific. Wally’s is just one of the remarkable stories about the countless ordinary men and women who were asked to act in extraordinary ways during World War II. But each story is unique and each one deserves telling. This is Wally’s story—the story of Captain Wallace B. Thomson, a Marine Pilot at the Jugular of the Solomons.

The Institute of Medicine carried out a study mandated by Congress and sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide an assessment of several issues related to noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus associated with service in the Armed Forces since World War II. The resulting book, Noise and Military Service: Implications for Hearing Loss and Tinnitus, presents findings on the presence of hazardous noise in military settings, levels of noise exposure necessary to cause hearing loss or tinnitus, risk factors for noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus, the timing of the effects of noise exposure on hearing, and the adequacy of military hearing conservation programs and audiometric testing. The book stresses the importance of conducting hearing tests (audiograms) at the beginning and end of military service for all military personnel and recommends several steps aimed at improving the military services' prevention of and surveillance for hearing loss and tinnitus. The book also identifies research needs, emphasizing topics specifically related to military service.

Rogue State and its author came to sudden international attention when Osama Bin Laden quoted the book publicly in January 2006, propelling the book to the top of the bestseller charts in a matter of hours. This book is a revised and updated version of the edition Bin Laden referred to in his address.

This book records the exploits of the airmen of the first Australian Beaufort squadron in action in World War II. Developed as a torpedo and general reconnaissance bomber, the Beaufort was the heaviest, most powerful and most complex aircraft ever built in this country. It entered service with the Royal Australian Air Force at a time when Japanese invasion seemed imminent. As the tide of the war in the South-West Pacific turned from one mostly fought over the ocean to a land-based operation, the original squadron was joined by additional Beaufort units to form the RAAF's No 71 Wing. Employing new methods of warfare, the Beaufort crews closely supported American and Australian ground forces. Using participants' own words to describe events, from the hazards of training to the fury of offensive operations, the author vividly brings to life the bravery of the aviators and the dedication and skill of the ground crews who operated Beauforts during the protracted campaign across the South-West Pacific.

Presents the most up-to-date clinical and experimental research in neurotrauma in an illustrated, accessible, comprehensive volume.

Dictionary of Arabic Loanwords in the Languages of Central and East Africa analyzes around 3000 Arabic loanwords in more than 50 languages in the area, and completes the work started in a previous similar work on West Africa.

As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.