The author is a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War and has spent over fifty years flying airplanes, from cropdusters to four-engine jets. This is his story of living a life in the commercial aviation industry, how he did it, and what it was like. He is now retired and living with his wife in her hometown, Smith Center, Kansas.

When items from Albert's house are stolen, Mackenzie Davis must track them down and find the thieves before he is blamed for the robbery.

What really happened to the upper Michigan village of Birch? It is spring time, 1964, and Dick Chapman, up north on a fishing trip from Ohio, intends to find out. He is shocked to discover the old town gated off and abandoned. That night, Dick returns to the moonlit town and begins to uncover the chilling facts.

After crashing into the side of a mountain, Scuttle is afraid to fly until his friends boost his confidence.

When the childhood friend and secret adviser to the president of the United States pilots his plane to Washington at the request of "the man" himself, he sets off a chain of events that will take him across the country and into the wilderness as he runs for his life. Despite promising his wife that he had quit the DC scene, Scott Piquard is once again answering the call because of looming war in Central America. Straying into the secret tunnels deep below the White House with the security card given to him by President Brady, he overhears high-ranking officers plotting against Brady's life. Spotting him, they fire on him and make a radio transmission identifying Scott as a would-be assassin. Escaping to his airplane, he must take off into storm clouds and elude the overwhelming resources of the US military, using his outdoor survival skills to outwit his pursuers and try to save his own life and that of the president. Just as it looks like he will succeed, a double twist threatens their lives again in a dramatic conclusion. Last Flight for Whiskey Mike is a fantastic read. I loved what you did with the military scenarios. I have read all of Ludlum and Clancy, and this ranks up there with their top ten percent. —FBI regional supervisor (name withheld due to regulations)

A sweeping, brilliantly vivid history of the sudden end of the British empire and the moment when America became a world superpower. "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Winston Churchill's famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously affirmed his loyalty to the world-wide institution that he had served for most of his life. Britain fought and sacrificed on a worldwide scale to defeat Hitler and his allies-and won. Yet less than five years after Churchill's defiant speech, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian Independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. As the sun set on Britain's Empire, the age of America as world superpower dawned. How did this rapid change of fortune come about? Peter Clarke's book is the first to analyze the abrupt transition from Rule Britannia to Pax Americana. His swiftly paced narrative makes superb use of letters and diaries to provide vivid portraits of the figures around whom history pivoted: Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and a host of lesser-known figures though whom Clarke brilliantly shows the human dimension of epochal events. The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire is a captivating work of popular history that shows how the events that followed the war reshaped the world as profoundly as the conflict itself.

In the spring of 1942, Japan's Admiral Yamamoto devised an ingenious strategy to attack Midway Island and deliver the knockout punch of the war in the Pacific. His elegant operational plan--which involved elaborate traps and diversions and required clockwork coordination--was founded on complete faith that he could predict the Americans' every move. But the perfect plan went wrong, and Japan's elite Strike Force was crushed, losing four carriers, over three hundred aircraft, and 2,500 men.What can today's business managers learn from Yamamoto's stunning defeat at the Battle of Midway? A great deal, according to Richard Luecke, and in Scuttle Your Ships Before Advancing, he illuminates lessons to be learned from Yamamoto and other leaders who have faced memorable crises. We find, for instance, the epitome of decisiveness and entrepreneurialism in Hernan Cortes, as he and a small band of 16th-century adverturers risked everything in a bold gamble for the Aztec empire (the book's title, Scuttle Your Ships, refers to Cortes' strategy that kept his men moving forward). Underdogs who would challenge the status quo can look to France's Louis XI, the "Spider King," and learn how he undermined entrenched rivals through patience and cunning. The Emperor Hadrian, in his consolidation of the sprawling Roman Empire, provides a brilliant model for managing today's multinational corporation. And attitudes toward technology and innovation are vividly illustrated by the 15th-century Battle of Agincourt, in which the stubborn refusal of the French to adopt their English enemy's weapon--the longbow--led to their massacre. From these and other historical episodes, Luecke shows how leadership, daring, and artful administration meant the difference between success and failure. He draws explicit lessons for managers from these long-ago events, and he also reveals parallels in the recent experiences of major corporations from GM to Shearson Lehman. And along the way, he evokes portraits of Martin Luther, W. Edwards Deming, and other visionaries as they struggled with the timeless challenges of authority, change, and human conflict.Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Skillfully narrated, inspiring yet down-to-earth, Scuttle Your Ships Before Advancing serves up powerful historical lessons for all who would manage and lead in the twenty-first century.