THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A guide for living outdoors and communing with the natural world—under the open skies. "I believe in sleeping outdoors, surrounded by tall fir trees, darkness and cold. Lying on my back and looking up at the stars, watching my breath form thin clouds." Under the Open Skies is one man’s perspective-shifting, immersive journey into the wilds of northern Sweden and into his own soul. For four years, Markus Torgeby lived alone in a hut he built with his hands in the Jämtland forest on the northern tip of Sweden, reconnecting with nature, and healing from the stress and strain of urban life and an athletic career derailed by injury. For Markus, living in the forest provided something concrete—cool winter air on his face, a cotton canvas of clouds overhead, wet clothes drying over the fire. Free from the constraints of modernity, his only responsibilities were the basics of survival—shelter, heat, food. Rooted on the ground under a bed of leaves, with his head finally aligned with his body, Markus found the solitude and silence he needed to be reborn. In this moving elegy, Markus offers lessons both practical—how to make fire, how to craft an outdoor bed, how to tap trees for water—and profound—what it means to become one with the natural world, to live authentically, to reconnect with yourself and your surroundings. Illustrated with 75 beautiful full-color photographs taken by his wife, Frida, Under the Open Skies is as invigorating as a long hike on a brisk morning and as sublime as a bowl of cinnamon porridge at the end of a long day. It is an invitation—to the stressed, disconnected, and lonely, to all who yearn to unplug and slow down, to those who wonder how life got so complicated—to come home to nature, to open the mind and heart to the wide-open sky.

"As a young Afghan woman who dreamed of becoming an air force pilot, Niloofar Rahmani confronted far more than technical challenges; she faced the opprobrium of an entire society." —Pamela Constable, author of Playing with Fire and former Kabul and Islamabad bureau chief for the Washington Post The true story of Niloofar Rahmani and her determination to become Afghanistan's first female air force pilot—as seen on Anderson Cooper and ABC News In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Rahmani entered Afghanistan's military academy. Rahmani had to break through social barriers to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness—essential qualities for a pilot. She performed the first solo flight of her class—ahead of all her male classmates—and in 2013 became Afghanistan's first female fixed-wing air force pilot. The US State Department honored Rahmani with the International Women of Courage Award and brought her to the United States to meet Michelle Obama and fly with the US Navy's Blue Angels. But when she returned to Kabul, the danger to her and her family had increased significantly. Rahmani and her family are portraits of the resiliency of refugees and the accomplishments they can reach when afforded with opportunities

Fans of the X-Files will likely appreciate this stunning expose of unexplained phenomena and government cover-ups, from a former UFO investigator for the British Ministry of Defense. Pope shares the secrets that he learned investigating and analyzing claims of UFO sightings and their impacts on national security.

This book recounts and analyzes the history of one of the best-kept diplomatic and security secrets of the last half-century—the Open Skies Treaty: a treaty that allows the U.S., the Russian Federation, and over 30 other signatories to fly unarmed reconnaissance aircraft over one another's territory. First proposed by President Eisenhower in 1955, shelved by succeeding administrations, re-launched by President George H. W. Bush in 1989, and finally ratified in 2002, the Treaty has been one of the most important security instruments of the 21st century—with over 1,000 flights logged to date providing confidence for the governments, intelligence communities, and militaries of former and potential adversaries. Written by a professor and former diplomat who was deeply involved in the negotiations of the Open Skies Treaty from 1989 to 1995, this book is a meticulous work of political history that explores how Open Skies affected, and was affected by, the extraordinary times of its negotiation—during which the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed. But it is also a potential blueprint for future applications of the Open Skies concept by providing insights into the role that cooperative aerial monitoring can play in helping to transform other difficult relationships around the world. As such it will serve as a negotiation handbook for diplomats, bureaucrats, and politicians and as a case-study textbook for IR students and students of diplomacy.

"Containing the public messages, speeches, and statements of the President", 1956-1992.

'Beyond Open Skies' offers a systematic comparative analysis of the legal and policy dimensions of airline deregulation by federal fiat in the United States and by supranational collaboration in the European Union. The book draws upon a variety of sources, including very recent developments in U.S. and EC international aviation law, policy, and diplomacy, to propose a genuine multilateral air transport system. It examines the potential of the 'open skies' initiative, in the aftermath of the new U.S./EC air transport agreement, to inspire a genuine globalization of the world's air transport industry in such crucial aspects as the following: cabotage; ownership and citizenship requirements; route selection; airline identity; capacity; pricing regimes; competition and public aid; regulatory harmonization; labor laws; provisions for charter and/or cargo transportation; fair operation of and access to computer reservations systems; authorization of code-sharing arrangements; alliances and antitrust immunity; and dispute resolution.