Goodbye Miramar

The book starts in the neighborhood of Miramar in San Juan, Puerto Rico towards the end of the 1960s It begins in midst of a relationship between two college students. The woman is Susan Ruiz, the daughter of a well known artist of the time, who is seeped in European culture: and her male counterpart is Hector Ramon Martinez, the son of a renown medical doctor who lives in Ocean Park, a neighborhood of established professionals. The novel takes place in the middle of the intellectual, political, and drug culture of the time. Hector Ramon Martinez, who aspires to be a writer, but who suffers a severe mental breakdown, is sent to Spain where he is hospitalized in the Esquerdo Sanatorium before he drifts through different cities in an attempt to find himself, in a valid reason for his life. The two of them will meet again in New York University in Manhattan where even though they are in the process of drafting their doctoral dissertations, they walk and talk the streets of the Big Apple without a clear idea of what they can become. The result for him, at any rate, is this convoluted text.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "If you loved the movie, you will love the real story in the book." -- Fox & Friends On the 50th anniversary of the creation of the "Topgun" Navy Fighter School, its founder shares the remarkable inside story of how he and eight other risk-takers revolutionized the art of aerial combat. When American fighter jets were being downed at an unprecedented rate during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy turned to a young lieutenant commander, Dan Pedersen, to figure out a way to reverse their dark fortune. On a shoestring budget and with little support, Pedersen picked eight of the finest pilots to help train a new generation to bend jets like the F-4 Phantom to their will and learn how to dogfight all over again. What resulted was nothing short of a revolution -- one that took young American pilots from the crucible of combat training in the California desert to the blistering skies of Vietnam, in the process raising America's Navy combat kill ratio from two enemy planes downed for every American plane lost to more than 22 to 1. Topgun emerged not only as an icon of America's military dominance immortalized by Hollywood but as a vital institution that would shape the nation's military strategy for generations to come. Pedersen takes readers on a colorful and thrilling ride -- from Miramar to Area 51 to the decks of aircraft carriers in war and peace-through a historic moment in air warfare. He helped establish a legacy that was built by him and his "Original Eight" -- the best of the best -- and carried on for six decades by some of America's greatest leaders. Topgun is a heartfelt and personal testimony to patriotism, sacrifice, and American innovation and daring.

This is the story of one of the most important American newspapermen of the twentieth century. Roy Howard rose to prominence at the height of newspapers’ power and became a leader in the evolution of print news starting in 1908—when E. W. Scripps appointed him head of the fledgling United Press at age 25—through his tenure as chairman of the Scripps-Howard empire until 1952. As Howard expanded and modernized the business, he landed some of the most important scoops between World War I and the Korean War. Ebullient, likeable, and outgoing, he headed one of only two coast-to-coast news concerns—Hearst being the other. An advisor to presidents and prime ministers, Howard witnessed the most significant events of the time. A 1930 front-page New York Times article named him one of the 59 men who “rule” America, with John D. Rockefeller topping the list. Time magazine put him on the cover. The Saturday Evening Post lionized him. Even his enemies gave him plenty of coverage: The New Yorker excoriated him in a four-part series, although the author admitted that Howard’s and Hearst’s were the only American newspaper publishers whose photographs the average newspaper reader would recognize. With exclusive, first-time access to thousands of previously unpublished documents in the privately held Howard family archives, author Patricia Beard opens a rich mine of stories from one of the most volatile periods in history as revealed by the head of a newspaper empire at a time when the press both made and broke the news.

The unforgettable story of a family swept into history by the Cuban Revolution In The House on G Street, award-winning author Lisandro Pérez tells Cuba’s story through the lens of a single family: his own. His book relays the tales of two officers who fought against the Spanish for Cuban independence; a plantation owner who smuggles himself onto a ship; families divided by political loyalties; an orphaned boy from central Cuba who would go on to amass a fortune; a fatal love triangle; violence; and the ever-growing presence of the United States. It all culminates with an unforgettable portrait of a childhood spent in a world that was giving way to another one. The House on G Street is a unique depiction of one of the most consequential events of the twentieth century, told through generations of ancestors whose lives were shaped by dramatic historical forces. Pérez disentangles the complex history by following his family’s thread, imbuing political events with personal meaning. Their story begins with emigration to Cuba and follows the waning years of the colony. The end of Spanish rule gives way to pervasive American influence, and Perez’s family turned to New York as they adapted to the realities of a new republic with compromised sovereignty: privileged educations in boarding schools in Long Island and the Hudson Valley; a family business that took tobacco leaves from the soil of central Cuba to the docks of the East River; and grandparents who met and fell in love one night in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His family learned to navigate the uneasy relationship between the United States and Cuba, a relationship that was destined to end in dramatic fashion. More than sixty years later, the Cuban Revolution resists receding into the past, sparking continued discussion, debate, and reinterpretation. There is a great deal that is known about the broad historical conditions that inexorably pushed Cuba towards revolution, but much less is known about the people who lived that dramatic history. It is a story that, if not recovered and told, will be lost, for Pérez’s ancestors lived in a world that no longer exists, swept away by a tide of revolutionary change. The House on G Street follows a family whose lives mirror the history of a nation. The result is a compelling blend of memoir and in-depth historical research, a remarkable new view of the path to revolution as seen from the first person.

Be the faithful wife or girlfriend who teaches that her area is respected, in the same way that she respects the area of her husband or boyfriend, within the limits of cordiality, communication and fidelity. That is learned and taught! How? With patience, tolerance and a lot of intelligence: that's what I call a bird eating on the palm of your hand! Be the star of your interpersonal relationships and at the same time, be humble in accepting your defeats and triumphs. To take advantage of that learning and put it into practice for later effects, this is resilience. In other countries, of course, it is not in his word the term: Cuaima, but men's aptitude to women is universal and there are likely to be various ways of expressing their discontent when their wife behaves differently than he expects. Today, women are synonymous with intelligence, perseverance, constancy, struggle, dynamism, love, freedom and if someone says: You are a cuaima! You must respond with pride: 'I am Cuaima, so what?

Sea Legs is a collection of nautical aviation vignettes covering the thirty-three year naval career of the author beginning in the US Naval Academy, naval flight training fleet squadron and test pilot duties as he advanced to the grade of Rear Admiral. The stories include his early fleet squadron experience as a "nugget" pilot on USS Oriskany, his selection to be a Navy test pilot (including the account of his first ejection from an out-of-control test aircraft), his fleet exerience in a fighter squadron based on the USS Lexington during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later on the USS Shangri La in the Mediterranean. This tour was followed by three cruises in the Tonkin Gulf on the USS Ticonderoga, (during which he ejected for the second time) USS Hancock and USS Bonhomme Richard during which he flew 167 combat missions over Vietnam for which he was awarded seventeen combat decorations. The vignettes also follow him through tours of duty in the Pentagon and cinCLantFleet staff, including his stint as the lead pilot in the movie, "Tora, Tora, Tora" flying off of USS Yorktown. Many of these vignettes are humorous, a few tragic, but all are exciting and serve to give the reader a good idea of what US naval carrier aviation was all about in the latter half of the 20th century.