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  Treading the Deep -...

  Bradley Jones

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  A directionless young man with an anxiety disorder enlists in the military—and accomplishes things he never expected—in this inspiring, entertaining memoir. In his wildest dreams, Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Bradley P. Jones never thought he would make a career out of the military. Like many, he joined for the college tuition assistance. Secretly worried that his panic attacks might prevent him from making it through, he was nevertheless determined to serve out his first and only enlistment, and then move on to bigger and better things. He managed to leave the military—called a break in service—for four years, but the military never left his thoughts or his system.   There was something about serving his country that constantly called to him through his missionary service in South America and then into his university studies. Bradley finally succumbed to that calling—reenlisting into an AH-64 Apache helicopter battalion near the university. From there, his service led to a career he loved—working on Apaches as a full-time federal employee, while starting a family with his wife as a newlywed. While serving in Kuwait on September 11, 2001, his life, along with those of millions of others in and out of uniform, changed. From that day, his career trajectory seemed to him to be predetermined, finally culminating in his appointment to serve his beloved fellow soldiers as the top enlisted member in the battalion.   In Treading the Deep, Bradley Jones’s humor and faith-promoting experiences restore our belief in the tenacity of the human spirit and its ability to ultimately overcome—no matter the trials or circumstances.

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  Another Good Dog - One Family...

  Cara Sue Achterberg

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  When Cara felt her teenaged children slipping away and saw an empty nest on the horizon, she decided the best way to fill that void was with dogs—lots of them—and so her foster journey began.In 2015, her Pennsylvania farm became a haven for Operation Paws for Homes. There were the nine puppies at once, which arrived with less than a day's notice; a heart—worm positive dog; a deeply traumatized stray pup from Iraq; and countless others who just needed a gentle touch and a warm place to sleep. Operation Paws for Homes rescues dogs from high-kill shelters in the rural south and shuttles them north to foster homes like Cara's on the way to their forever homes.What started as a search for a good dog, led to an epiphany that there wasn't just one that could fill the hole left in her heart from her children gaining independence—she could save dozens along the way. The stories of these remarkable dogs—including an eighty-pound bloodhound who sang arias for the neighbors—and the joy they bring to Cara and her family (along with a few chewed sofa cushions) fill the pages of this touching and inspiring new book that reveals the wonderful rewards of fostering.When asked how she can possibly say goodbye to that many loveable pups, Cara says, "If I don't give this one away, I can't possibly save another."

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  Joker One - A Marine Platoon's...

  Donovan Campbell

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  When Donovan Campbell's platoon deployed to Ramadi in the spring of 2004, they believed they'd be spending most of their time building schools, training police, and making friends with the citizens. But shortly after arriving, when Campbell awoke to the chilling cry of "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad!" echoing from minaret to minaret across the city, he knew they had an altogether different situation on their hands.For nearly the entire day, Joker-One—the forty-man infantry platoon that Campbell was charged with leading—fought house-to-house to rescue other units, sometimes trading grenades with their enemies from just a few feet away. In the days and months that followed, hundreds of hard-core insurgents launched simultaneous attacks on the Marine forces in Ramadi, their ranks swelled by thousands of local volunteers drawn from the citizens of a city whose primary export was officers in Saddam Hussein's army. By the fall of 2004, nearly half the men in Campbell's platoon had been wounded in some of the fiercest urban fighting since Vietnam; less than a month after they withdrew, the forces in Ramadi were doubled, then tripled.Although Joker One is set in Iraq, the book's themes—brotherhood, honor, and sacrifice—are universal. Campbell shows us how his Marines' patience, discipline, and love for one another created a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts, and how the essential goodness of these men remains unchanged by all of the pain and the terror surrounding them. His sharp-eyed, evocative, and unflinching account of his deployment is just as impressive as the man himself—a man who chose to enter the military because of his patriotism, sense of privilege, and deep religious faith when most of his Princeton classmates were cashing in their ivy league educations for lucrative careers among the financial elite. The vivid and gripping battle scenes will satisfy fans of military memoirs, but it's Campbell's sense of duty, faith, and love for his men that makes Joker One a truly extraordinary account of a war that has touched us all.

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  The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals

  Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins,...

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  Learn the origins of over 2,000 mammal species names with this informative reference guide. 
   
  Just who was the Przewalski after whom Przewalski's horse was named? Or Husson, the eponym for the rat Hydromys hussoni? Or the Geoffroy whose name is forever linked to Geoffroy's cat? This unique reference provides a brief look at the real lives behind the scientific and vernacular mammal names one encounters in field guides, textbooks, journal articles, and other scholarly works. 
   
  Arranged to mirror standard dictionaries, the more than 1,300 entries included here explain the origins of over 2,000 mammal species names. Each bio-sketch lists the scientific and common-language names of all species named after the person, outlines the individual’s major contributions to mammalogy and other branches of zoology, and includes brief information about his or her mammalian namesake’s distribution. The two appendixes list scientific and common names for ease of reference, and, where appropriate, individual entries include mammals commonly—but mistakenly—believed to be named after people. 
   
  The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals is a highly readable and informative guide to the people whose names are immortalized in mammal nomenclature. 
   
  “A small treasure trove of information about the people whose names are immortalized in mammalian nomenclature. Given that we mammalogists are prone to ancestor worship, I expect it to be a best-seller.” —Don E. Wilson, Journal of Mammalian Evolution 
   
  “This is a great reference for the mammalogy professional or student, or the curious naturalist.” —Wildlife Activist 
   
  “This is a splendid book which fills a real gap in zoological literature.” —Nicholas Gould, International Zoo News

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  The Flatlanders - Now It's Now...

  John T. Davis

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  “Conservative West Texas spawns radical creativity and lifelong bonds of friendship in this story of an unlikely band” from the renowned music journalist (Kirkus Reviews).   A group of three friends who made music in a house in Lubbock, Texas, recorded an album that wasn’t released and went their separate ways into solo careers. That group became a legend and then—twenty years later—a band. The Flatlanders—Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock—are icons in American music, with songs blending country, folk, and rock that have influenced a long list of performers, including Robert Earl Keen, the Cowboy Junkies, Ryan Bingham, Terry Allen, John Hiatt, Hayes Carll, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, and Lyle Lovett.   In The Flatlanders: Now It’s Now Again, Austin author and music journalist John T. Davis traces the band’s musical journey. He explores why music was, and is, so important in Lubbock and how earlier West Texas musicians such as Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison, as well as a touring Elvis Presley, inspired the young Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock. Davis recounts their first year (1972–1973) as a band, during which they recorded the songs that, decades later, were released as the albums More a Legend Than a Band and The Odessa Tapes. He follows the three musicians through their solo careers and into their first decade as a (re)united band, in which they cowrote songs for the first time on the albums Now Again and Hills and Valleys and recovered their extraordinary original demo tape, lost for forty years. Many roads later, the Flatlanders are finally both a legend and a band.

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  Niels Bohr and J Robert...

  Charles River Editors

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  The Manhattan Project would ultimately yield the “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” bombs that released more than 100 Terajoules of energy at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but as it turned out, the Axis were not far behind with their own nuclear weapons program. When the Nazis’ quest for a nuclear weapon began in earnest in 1939, no one really had a handle on how important nuclear weapons would prove to war and geopolitics. The pursuit of nuclear weapons moved the scientist nearer to the role of combatant, placing special responsibilities on the scientific community to make critical moral decisions. However, as they developed atomic weapons, they could at the same time only warn military powers of their use. Advocates for nuclear power as a civilian energy resource but expressing misgivings about nuclear war put them at odds with uninformed branches of the military.  
  Niels Bohr was a world-famous physicist and one of the patriarchs of quantum theory. Given the vibrant, peaceful haven that is Denmark today, it’s somewhat ironic that Bohr played an instrumental role in the development of the atomic bomb. Even so, the truth and depth of the matter, much like the self-professed pacifist himself, is far more complex. 
  The American war effort against the Japanese and Germans also included denying either one the use of a practical nuclear weapon. Physics was in its highest stage of advancement in Europe during this time, while J. Robert Oppenheimer emerged as an extraordinary scientific mind in the United States. Despite requiring the work of thousands of scientists and assistants in fashioning the weapon that eventually came to pass, Oppenheimer alone has been become renowned as the “father of the atomic bomb” due to his leadership of the Manhattan Project.

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