One More Mission

How often is it that we are fortunate enough to sit down and listen to first-person accounts of a distant past - not from a history book or a television documentary, but from a human being, who lived it, experienced it and is willing to share it. Jesse Pettey is one of these people who as a young man joined the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor because he felt it was his duty. He learned to fly a PT-19 and moved on to a BT-13. During World War Two, Pettey piloted a B-24 'Liberator' and flew his first combat mission in August of 1944, to be followed by 34 more. One More Mission is not only an account of World War Two aerial combat missions with the 15th Air Force in Italy, but of a young man's journey through a gauntlet of emotion, growth and trying experiences. Mr. Pettey's glimpses into his past are a heartwarming journey to a different era, a different pace and a different lifestyle. His talent carries the reader along through his upbringing in East Texas through the precarious days of flight training and then on to the dangerous excitement of deadly combat over the skies of Europe. And all the while, you feel as if he's sitting across a table from you with a cup of coffee in hand, sharing the times of his life with a close friend. His story is well written yet personal, inspiring and yet humble. It is a story that demands sharing. One More Mission is a journey not to be missed. Reviewed by Denise M. Clark 6/2002: www.deniseclark.com

Controversial Vietnam war hero and author of Under Fire, Oliver North returns to Vietnam in an attempt to resolve his own sense of conflict about the war. North's deeply moving narrative chronicles an unforgettable journey to learn if it's possible for something good to come from a nation's epic tragedy.

From the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, a practical guide for leaders looking to make their organizations more interconnected and unified in the midst of sudden change. Too often, companies end up with teams stuck in their own silos, pursuing goals and metrics in isolation. Their traditional autocratic structures create stability, scalability, and predictability -- but in a world that demands rapid adaptation to a new reality, this traditional model simply doesn’t work. In Team of Teams, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal and former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell made the case for a new organizational model combining the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization. Now, in One Mission, Fussell channels all his experiences, both military and corporate, into powerful strategies for unifying isolated and distrustful teams. This practical guide will help leaders in any field implement the Team of Teams approach to tear down their silos improve collaboration, and avoid turf wars. By committing to one higher mission, organizations develop an overall capability that far exceeds the sum of their parts. From Silicon Valley software giant Intuit to a government agency on the plains of Oklahoma, organizations have used Fussell’s methods to unite their people around a single compelling vision, resulting in superior performance. One Mission will help you follow their example to a more agile and resilient future.

"The book that America needs right now." --Tom Brokaw, journalist and author of The Greatest Generation "Jake Wood offers one of the most soaring definitions of service I've ever seen." --Maria Shriver, award-winning journalist and author of I've Been Thinking From Marine sniper Jake Wood, a riveting memoir of leading over 100,000 veterans to a life of renewed service, volunteering to battle, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, pandemics, and civil wars, and inspiring onlookers as their unique military training saved lives and rebuilt our country. When Jake Wood arrived in the States after two grueling tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he watched his unit lose more men to suicide than to enemy hands overseas. Reeling, Jake looked for a way to direct their restlessness towards a new mission--and put their formidable skills to good use. When an earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Jake had his answer. He convinced several fellow veterans to join him on a ragtag mission to provide desperately needed aid. Despite the high stakes, they were able to untangle complex problems quickly and keep calm under pressure. In this raw, adrenaline-filled narrative, Jake recounts, how, over the past 10 years, he's built the disaster response organization Team Rubicon, and seen the work provide a lifeline back to purpose for the heroes among us. Not only do these intrepid volunteers race against the clock to aid communities after Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Harvey, COVID-19, and hundreds of other disasters; they also fight for something just as important--each other. Once a Warrior provides a soaring look at what our veterans are capable of--and what might become of America's next greatest generation.

How often is it that we are fortunate enough to sit down and listen to first-person accounts of a distant past - not from a history book or a television documentary, but from a human being, who lived it, experienced it and is willing to share it. Jesse Pettey is one of these people who as a young man joined the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor because he felt it was his duty. He learned to fly a PT-19 and moved on to a BT-13. During World War Two, Pettey piloted a B-24 ´Liberator´ and flew his first combat mission in August of 1944, to be followed by 34 more. One More Mission is not only an account of World War Two aerial combat missions with the 15th Air Force in Italy, but of a young man´s journey through a gauntlet of emotion, growth and trying experiences. Mr. Pettey´s glimpses into his past are a heartwarming journey to a different era, a different pace and a different lifestyle. His talent carries the reader along through his upbringing in East Texas through the precarious days of flight training and then on to the dangerous excitement of deadly combat over the skies of Europe. And all the while, you feel as if he´s sitting across a table from you with a cup of coffee in hand, sharing the times of his life with a close friend. His story is well written yet personal, inspiring and yet humble. It is a story that demands sharing. One More Mission is a journey not to be missed. Reviewed by Denise M. Clark 6/2002: www.deniseclark.com

Mike Masters is a five-year-old prodigy with unique skills that draw him into America's deep Black Operations world. Getting in wasn't the problem. It's going to be getting out from under the foot of General Mace that could spell his and the world's doom.

The riveting firsthand account of World War II pilot Robert Morgan, his crew, and the legendary Memphis Belle—written with Ron Powers, cowriter of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers. A powerful chronicle of loyalty, love, and heroism under fire, this is the unforgettable memoir of a member of the Greatest Generation who fought in America’s greatest battles—and of the war one man waged both in and out of the skies. High-spirited, young Robert Morgan was transformed from a fast-living, privileged playboy who grew up hobnobbing with the Vanderbilts into a steel-nerved pilot forged in the cauldron of World War II’s most dangerous and desperate aerial encounters. This is the triumphant tale of that transformation—and of the airplane and crew that never failed to bring him back home.

In this remarkable tale of courage, historian Dawn Trimble Bunyak recounts the experiences of her uncle, Lawrence Pifer, a technical sergeant who survived fourteen months of internment as a prisoner of war in World War II Nazi Germany. A radio operator and ball turret gunner on the American B-17 bomber Slightly Dangerous, Pifer was shot down during a raid on March 4, 1944. As he parachuted from the plummeting plane, Pifer witnessed the deaths of two of his fellow crewmembers. Captured by Nazi soldiers and taken to a series of German Stalag Luft camps, Pifer and other servicemen-mostly in their teens and twenties-endured torture, starvation, disease, and forced marches. When British forces liberated Pifer's group, he pushed his POW experiences deep into the recesses of his mind, not to recall them in detail for decades. Years later, a POW group at a Veterans Administration hospital helped Pifer realize that he was ready to tell his story. After forty hours of interviews with Pifer, Dawn Trimble Bunyak retells the enthralling story of an average enlisted man's struggle to survive in the face of hopelessness, with only his strong faith and pride in country to sustain him. In his foreword, historian Arnold Krammer shows how popular views of the prisoner-of-war experience have changed dramatically over time yet how rare are such first-person accounts as Pifer's. Enhanced by numerous photographs and maps and an appendix of prisoners' poetry, Our Last Mission is one of only a few oral histories that details the daily experiences of one of the 94,000 American POWs in Europe during World War II.