Chance For Glory

The book is about Clyde Pangborn, a Washington-born early aviator who accomplished feats far exceeding those of persons such as Charles Lindberg but got nearly zero recognition for is deeds. The book, One Chance for Glory is a historical fiction book about Pangborn being the first to fly the 4500 miles nonstop across the Pacific in 1931. To do this, he had to jettison his landing gear into the ocean shortly after takeoff from Japan, do an in-flight repair job outside the airplane at 17,000 feet at night in frigid October weather, put the airplane into a terrifying dive down to 1400 feet over the Bering Sea to restart the engine, divert the flight path to avoid collision with Mt Rainer upon arrival in the US, and belly-land (crash land) the airplane on a landing strip cut out of the sage brush above Wenatchee, Washington.

First published in 1957, A Chance for Glory is a wonderful biography of Dr. Justus Erich Bollman, the German physician who played a colorful part in the life of the Marquise de Lafayette, the young wife of the French aristocrat and military officer Marquis de Lafayette. Dr. Bollman studied medicine at Göttingen, and practised in Karlsruhe and in Paris, where he settled at the beginning of the French Revolution. He accompanied Count Narbonne, who fled to England in 1792, and in London fell in with Lally-Tollendal, who induced him to go to Austria and endeavor to find out where the Marquis de Lafayette was being confined. He established himself as a physician in Vienna. Learning that Lafayette was a prisoner at Olmütz, he formed a plan to rescue him with the assistance of Francis Kinloch Huger (1773-1855), a young man from South Carolina who was in Vienna while traveling through Europe. Communicating with the prisoner through the prison surgeon, the two fell upon his guards while he was taking exercise in a carriage, and succeeded in getting him away on a horse; but he rode in the wrong direction and was recaptured. Bollman escaped to Prussia, but was handed over to the Austrian authorities, who kept him in prison for nearly a year, and then released him on condition that he should leave the country. “Dr. Justus Erich Bollman felt that he had been brought into the world for more than the practice of medicine in Hanover. Though Bollman was a more diligent charmer than a doctor and managed to get what he wanted through the right contacts, his major goal was in line with the cause of freedom. This was the rescue of Lafayette, imprisoned when his form of revolution proved too limited for the Paris powers of the Terror. Bollman’s attempts to effect escape were remarkable and as the scene shifts all across Europe and to America, there is the pace and drama of a good novel.”—Kirkus Review

A broke PI attempts to prove the innocence of a wrongly convicted homeless man Late at night by posh Gramercy Park, a woman peers into the backseat of a parked car. She’s never seen a dead body before, but there’s enough blood that she has no doubt what she’s looking at. She remembers seeing a strange man nearby, and the police use her fuzzy identification and a few other bits of tenuous evidence to finger Billy Sowell, an alcoholic bum with limited intelligence and a patchy memory, as the killer. Who cares if he’s guilty? Billy’s an easy conviction, and his case is forgotten until years later, when it falls in the lap of PI Marty Blake. Blake will take anything as he tries to rebuild his practice after a year’s suspension for illegal surveillance, and he attempts to clear Billy’s name using his expertise at computerized investigation. But when it comes to proving the New York Police Department wrong, virtual sleuthing will not be enough. For this computer expert, it’s time to play tough.

Armed with percussion rifles when most other US soldiers still carried flintlock muskets, the “Mississippi Rifles” served in the war against Mexico that followed the annexation of Texas in 1845. In Panting for Glory: The Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War, Richard Bruce Winders skillfully uncovers the contrasting wartime experiences of two regiments, the 1st and 2nd Mississippi Rifles. The 1st Mississippi Rifles were lauded for their service and remain a familiar part of the history of the Mexican War. Under the leadership of Col. Jefferson Davis—later the President of the Confederate States of America—the 1st enjoyed significant victories at the Battle of Buena Vista and the Battle of Monterey. The 2nd Mississippi Rifles, by contrast, saw little action and returned home overlooked and largely forgotten. Panting for Glory compares these regiments to show that the contours of history were sometimes arbitrary and that military historians, in their analysis of failure, should take into account a wide range of factors that influence outcomes, not merely records of wins and losses. As Winders concludes, “the 1st and 2nd Mississippi Rifles . . . offer the perfect opportunity to examine two sides of war: glory gained and glory denied.”

In October, 1812, as the 32-gun U.S. frigate Essex ventured out against the British enemy, only one man had any idea that this cruise would turn into the longest, strangest naval adventure in American history. That man was Captain David Porter, who had decided to run off with the navy's ship and its three hundred men to fight a separate Pacific war--one of privateering, pillaging, and orgies. Drawing on Porter's own writings and the accounts of eyewitnesses, the author memorably recounts the events of a dark and fatal voyage in which David Porter crosses the line from commander to cult-leader, from improbable fantasy to disastrous reality. In a tale so amazing that it reads like fiction, Porter, impelled by his own demons and by rivalry with the ghostly British buccaneer Lord Anson, took his men and boys on a seventeen-month mystery tour that did not end until he had disrupted the Chilean revolution, captured the entire English whaling fleet (manned mainly by Americans), vanished into the enchanted Galapagos, and re-emerged in Polynesia, where he made himself the conqueror-chief of the stone-age Nukuhivans. In the end, when he sought redemption with a glorious victory over a British opponent, he failed terribly and sacrificed the lives of one-third of his crew to his personal notions of heroism. Robert Booth tells the story of the ill-fated Essex with accuracy, immediacy, and a broad vision of its meanings as an epic of war, a gripping tale of the sea, a brilliant portrait of a disturbed and disturbing American hero, and a geo-political thriller that sheds new light on the origins of U.S. imperialism, the tragedy of missed opportunities, and the disastrous and permanent impact of Porter's rampage on the peoples of the Pacific.

Chance for Glory chronicles the untold story of the magical 1915 season, when the innovative strategies of Native American coach William Lone Star Dietz transformed undersized players into giants on the football field and led Washington State to victory in the first Rose Bowl. Published by Aviva Publishing.

First published in 1943, this autobiography is also a superb portrait of America's Depression years, by the folk singer, activist, and man who saw it all. Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and traveled this whole country over—not by jet or motorcycle, but by boxcar, thumb, and foot. During the journey of discovery that was his life, he composed and sang words and music that have become a national heritage. His songs, however, are but part of his legacy. Behind him Woody Guthrie left a remarkable autobiography that vividly brings to life both his vibrant personality and a vision of America we cannot afford to let die. “Even readers who never heard Woody or his songs will understand the current esteem in which he’s held after reading just a few pages… Always shockingly immediate and real, as if Woody were telling it out loud… A book to make novelists and sociologists jealous.” —The Nation

On rural Doylestown in southwest Pennsylvania, a most heart-rending story of romance that struggles to endure the furies of wartime plays out in Leslie Wayne Salsbury's Where Valor Proudly Sleeps. Written in a staid rhythm and prose apt for that time in the nation's history, the novel sets out with a strikingly authentic recreation of life in pre-Civil War Pennsylvania. Salsbury shows a richness of detail born out of diligent, even brilliant, research and a highly creative imagination. His characters speak out and tell us of a time and place where the most tumultuous and important battles of the Civil War were fought. On a fateful night, the two young lovers, Benjamin Wayneright and Alexandra Cadwalder, meet at a ball in the town armory. Introduced by Ben's teacher, Mrs. McIntyre, the two immediately find out how they are meant for each other. A most romantic night ensues and starts a strong, passionate relationship that will prove equal to the coming chaos of war. It is a story of heroic love: how two young lovers find their love blooming in the crucible of war and how they became a pair of strong hearts that influenced others in their town to defend the Union cause. Before the war came, Benjamin would lose his father and Alexandra was on the verge of losing hers to "bleeding cancers." Throughout forced separations, they remain true to each other. They survive the war but experienced firsthand the cost of preserving liberty and fighting for justice. They grow old in and around Doylestown, Bucks County. When Benjamin dies at a ripe old age, he is given a hero's burial by the town. Alexandra soon follows to reunite with her beloved.