Excerpt: Chapter I; I SCARCELY know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth?s credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhaver to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay. Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferrysteamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was bl...

Table of Contents: Chapter I, 1 -- Chapter II, 8 -- Chapter III, 14 -- Chapter IV, 24 -- Chapter V, 29 -- Chapter VI, 35 -- Chapter VII, 46 -- Chapter VIII, 49 -- Chapter IX, 55 -- Chapter X, 62 -- Chapter XI, 67 -- Chapter XII, 72 -- Chapter XIII, 80 -- Chapter XIV, 84 -- Chapter XV, 91 -- Chapter XVI, 96 -- Chapter XVII, 102 -- Chapter XVIII, 113 -- Chapter XIX, 119 -- Chapter XX, 125 -- Chapter XXI, 132 -- Chapter XXII, 136 -- Chapter XXIII, 139 -- Chapter XXIV, 143 -- Chapter XXV, 149 -- Chapter XXVI, 160 -- Chapter XXVII, 170 -- Chapter XXVIII, 177...

Chicago engineer Jack Howland is sent to the edge of the Canadian barren lands north of Prince Albert to establish a train route through some of the most trecherous terrain in North America. He would soon learn that it was not only the terrain that was forbidding, as he begins to understand why the previous engineers sent on the same mission had been forced to give up the task and flee back to the south. Mysterious visitors, suspicious characters, strange apparent coincidences, and one particularly mysterious girl meet Howland at every turn in this suspenseful tale of adventure, excitement, danger, and romance set in the northern Canadian wilderness. (Summary by Roger Melin)...

Adventure

Uneasy Money is a romantic comedy by P.G. Wodehouse, published during the First World War, it offers light escapism. More romantic but only a little less humorous that his mature works, it tells of the vicissitudes of poor Lord Dawlish, who inherits five million dollars, but becomes a serially disappointed groom. When the story opens Bill (Lord Dawlish, a thoroughly pleasant man) is engaged to a demanding actress. His first thought when hearing of his massive legacy from a stranger whose tendency to slice he once cured on a West Country golf course is of the disappointed relatives. His trip to the USA attempting to give back the windfall results in complication after complication, including firearms and burglaries as well as the usual human misunderstandings that accompany any human life. Uneasy Money was first published as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post in the USA from December 1915, and in the UK in Strand Magazine starting December 1916. It first appeared in book form on March 17, 1916 by D. Appleton & Co., New York, and later in the UK (on October 4, 1917) by Methuen & Co., London. A silent, black-and-white film version w...

Fiction, Humor, Romance

J'accuse est le titre d'un article rédigé par Émile Zola lors de l'affaire Dreyfus et publié dans le journal L'Aurore du 13 janvier 1898 sous forme d'une lettre ouverte au Président de la République Félix Faure. Il s'est inspiré d'un dossier fourni en 1896 par l'écrivain Bernard Lazare. (Résumé de Wikipedia) J'accuse! (I accuse!) was published January 13, 1898 in the maiden issue of the newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn). It had the effect of a bomb. In the words of historian Barbara Tuchman, it was one of the great commotions of history. Zola's intent was to force his own prosecution for libel so that the emerging facts of the Dreyfus case could be thoroughly aired. In this he succeeded. He was convicted, appealed, was retried, and, before hearing the result, fled to England on the advice of his counsel and friends, returning to Paris in June 1899 when he heard that Dreyfus's trial was to be reviewed. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Essay/Short nonfiction, History

Excerpt: THE PREFACE; If ever the story of any private Man?s Adventures in the World were worth making Publick, and were acceptable when Publish?d, the Editor of this Account thinks this will be so. The Wonders of this Man?s Life exceed all that (he thinks)is to be found extant; the Life of one Man being scarce capable of a greater Variety. The Story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men always apply them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example, and to justify and honour the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of our Circumstances, let them happen how they will. The Editor believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it: And however thinks, because all such things are dispatch?d, that the Improvement of it, as well to the Diversion, as to the Instruction of the Reader, will be the same; and as such, he thinks, without father Compliment to the World, he does them a great Service in the Publication....

Table of Contents: THE PREFACE, 1 -- THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, &c., 2 -- THE JOURNAL., 51

Excerpt: It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, mong the rest of my neighbors, heard in ordinary dis course that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Foreigner At Home. ?This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin? o?t.? Two recent books* one by Mr. Grant White on England, one on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. Michael?s Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the most of...

Contents CHAPTER I: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME ..................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II: SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER III: OLD MORTALITY .................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER IV: A COLLEGE MAGAZINE ...................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER V: AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER ............................................................................. 36 CHAPTER VI: PASTORAL .............................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER VII: THE MANSE .......................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER VIII: MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET .................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IX: THOMAS STEVENSON ? CIVIL ENGINEER...................................................... 58 CHAPTER X: TALK AND TALKERS ....................

Introduction: Benjamin Franklin was born in Milk Street, Boston, on January 6, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler who married twice, and of his seventeen children Benjamin was the youngest son. His schooling ended at ten, and at twelve he was bound apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who published the ?New England Courant.? To this journal he became a contributor, and later was for a time its nominal editor....

Ancient Nuclear Warfare? The Tunguska Riddle: a new theory. The Mother and the Father of the BOMB!

Inspector Stanley Mole doesn't mind a hard case, but things have gotten out of hand. There's a killer who escapes to a parallel universe, a frozen caveman with a bullet in his skull, a woman who claims to have witnessed her own murder, a toddler assassin, time-traveling dictators, and subatomic-particle sniffing butterflies. For Mole, this time more than just his reputation is on the line....

Poems by Jan De Raeymaeker

Grave talk ------------ Don't talk of graves at your tender age Not until your rickety rack is a trembling wreck Till your white-film eyes are all but blind And your toothless head is utterly deaf Until each day blinks and the world is a ghost Till you're grimly emaciated, decrepitly thin Mind overthrown, no recollection of anything Wait until the wake’s wet tears have tried to dry Till living memory is pickled in uisce beatha All pain shrieked out to a hellish banshee rattle Don't talk to me of graves until you're long gone Till clods are covering your coffin-wearing bones And a lyre plucked to softly lament your soul Until the headstone has reached weak anonymity Till its lichen-eaten rock cracks and drops Lengths of grass coiling tight in a strangling coif Don't talk to me of graves at my slender age ...

TABLE OF CONTENTS Doubt 5 Dark-sheen skin 6 Rebuke 7 Bird Bomb 8 Oak leaf 9 Grave talk 10 Tempest 11 The vagabond 12 Split-ends 13 Mince 14 Canvas 15 Delivery Mick 16 Dessert? 17 Dublin 18 Immigrating 19 John, 93 20 Leeuwstraat lady 21 A (close) Green 22 Type 24 Bath 25 November, the beat 26 Man molests Molly 28 Met Winter 29 Lights out 30 Opening wine 31 Setting sights 32 A Luas cums into the Green 33 Chimney-pot puff 34 Malin head 35 Hunting happiness 36 The joke 37 Mundane tourist 38 B&B 39 Street dance 40 Stephens Green 41 T...

The Secret Agent is Conrad's dark, and darkly comic story of a band of spies, anarchists, agents-provocateurs plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th Century. The novel centers on Verloc, a shop-owner, phony-anarchist and double-agent, who becomes embroiled in an ambitious terrorist plan to bomb the Greenwich Observatory. (Summary by Hugh McGuire)...

Spy stories

The many adventures of Professor Craig Kennedy were chronicled by Arthur B. Reeve (October 15, 1880 - August 9, 1936). Reeve was an American mystery writer who created 82 Craig Kennedy mystery stories. The stories have a very Sherlock Holmes type feel, In fact Kennedy has been referred to as the American Shelock Holmes. Along with his reporter friend, Walter Jameson, Kennedy solves many crimes and unveils mysteries using science. This book contains twelve of Professor Kennedy's adventures. The interesting thing about these stories is Kennedy uses newly discovered science from his time period, which we take for granted today. The first story, The Silent Bullet, has everyone wondering how a bullet could kill someone with no noise. Today, silencers on guns are commonplace in movies and on TV. Or as in The Deadly Tube featuring the story of a doctor causing his patients much harm with evil x-rays, or the developmnt of the gyroscope for aeroplanes in The Terror in the Air. Each story features a facinating look at life in the early 20th century, and even includes some action along the way....

Mystery

Excerpt: Colonel Chabert. ?Hullo! There is that old Box-coat again!? This exclamation was made by a lawyer?s clerk of the class called in French offices a gutter-jumper--a messenger in fact--who at this moment was eating a piece of dry bread with a hearty appetite. He pulled off a morsel of crumb to make into a bullet, and fired it gleefully through the open pane of the window against which he was leaning. The pellet, well aimed, rebounded almost as high as the window, after hitting the hat of a stranger who was crossing the courtyard of a house in the Rue Vivienne, where dwelt Maitre Derville, attorney-at-law....

Joseph Muller, quiet mannered detective, tries to solve the mystery of a man who died in his study, by a bullet hole in the chest. But all windows and doors were locked, from the inside. (summary by Dawn Larsen)...

Mystery

An atomic bomb explodes in the mountains of Montana. But was there really a bomb? And was it really in Montana, or in Tokyo? Are Liz and Elizabeth the same woman, is she married with children, is her husband a spy? These and many other questions are constantly asked, and answered, in this round-robin small book written and recorded by volunteers during the http://www.nanowrimo.org/target=_blank National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) November 2007. (Summary by Gesine)...

Fiction, Mystery, Science fiction, Adventure

The introduction of Shrike anti-radiation missile (ARM) negated the requirement to overfly the site, but its short range required further improvement. The improvement came in the Standard ARM, a missile that was followed by development of the High-Speed Anti- Radiation Missile, or HARM, the weapon of choice for today’s Weasel. That aircraft is the Wild Weasel, indicating the need for such an aircraft in the future....

According to CMSgt Cari Kent, 30th Space Wing command chief, it is at basic training that Airmen learn everything they need to succeed in the Air Force.1 In recent incidents, Airmen have exhibited unacceptable actions. These range from transporting cruise missiles loaded with warheads from Minot to Barksdale AFB in 2007 and erroneously shipping nuclear-missile fuses to Taiwan in 2006, to other lesser-known infractions in the Air Force. Certainly, the remedy to such attitudes and behaviors could not be simply applying lessons learned at basic training. Or could the application of the basics taught to initial trainees have changed the course of some of these events? What do Airmen experience at basic training that leads the chief to this conclusion?...

This paper examines the long development of precision guided bombs to show that the accuracy attained in Desert Storm was an evolution not a revolution in aerial warfare. This evolution continues and gives offensive airpower the advantage over the defense. Guided bomb development started during World War One with the “aerial torpedo”. When Desert Storm initiated in 1991 there were very few guided weapons that had not been extensively tested on training ranges and in combat. The precision demonstrated to the World during Desert Storm started evolving when airpower was first envisioned as a new dimension for conducting war, and was far from a revolution. Now, the continued development of imaging infrared, laser radar, synthetic aperture radar, and millimeter wave radar autonomous seekers further increases the flexibility, range, and effectiveness of guided bombs....

INTRODUCTION........1 EARLY GUIDED BOMBS THROUGH WORLD WAR TWO........3 World War One........3 Post World War One........4 World War Two........5 THE KOREAN WAR........19 THE VIETNAM WAR........22 Laser Guided Bombs (LGBs)........22 Electro-optical Guided Bombs........30 THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE 1970s........32 THE 1980s AND THE LIBYA RAID........35 DESERT STORM AND THE 1990s........38 Current Development Projects........41 EPILOGUE........48...

The author’s examination of the counterair strategy process shows how joint force commanders should balance objectives, the balance of forces, the nature of the theater, and policy limits to build a counterair strategy that links means to ends by choosing methods, targets, and attack timing.The author’s discussion of current counterair issues shows that the services appreciate the product (freedom of action for land, sea, and air forces) that control of the air provides, but neglect the process of obtaining it. Current air power disputes emphasize the control and targeting of air resources, and slight the potential impact of these issues on America’s future ability to control the air and space....

1 AIR SUPERIORITY AND JOINT OPERATIONS . . . . . 1 Notes . . . . . 4 2 VISIONS AND DOCTRINE . . . . 5 Doctrine . . . . 6 Counterair Doctrine Evaluation . . . . . 8 Service Doctrine . . . . . 12 Joint Doctrine . . . . . 14 Conclusion . . . . 14 Notes . . . . . 15 3 COUNTERAIR STRATEGY, TARGETS, AND TIMING . . . . . 19 The Counterair System . . . . 19 Basic Strategy Considerations . . . . 20 Strategic Choices . . . . . 22 Offense and Defense . . . . . 23 Targets . . . . 27 Strategy, Targets, and Timing . . . . 29 Measures of Success . . . . . 31 Conclusion . . . . 31 Notes . . . . . 32 4 COUNTERAIR FORCES . . . . 35 Capability and Cost . . . . 35 Air-to-Air and Surface-to-Air Weapons . . . . . 36 Manned and Unmanned Systems . . . . 37 Specialized and Multirole Forces . . . . 37 Weapons . . . . 38 Force Multipliers . . . . . 39 Conclusion . . . . 40 Notes . . . . . 40 5 COUNTERAIR ISSUES . . . . 43 Roles and Missions . . . . 43 The Bottom Up Review . . . . 44 Controlling Joint Air Forces . . . . . 48 Fire Support Coordination . . . . 50 Theater Missile Defense . . . . . 52 Conclusion . . . . 53 No...