James Vernon
Список книг автора James VernonThe Hostile Sky
In the summer of 1942 Jim Vernon, a nineteen-year-old college student in Butte, Montana, joined the U.S. Navy's aviation cadet training program and by the spring of 1945 was flying F6F Hellcats from the USS Ticonderoga off of the coast of Japan. This memoir of his years at war provides a carrier pilot's view of the conflict in the Pacific during the final months of the war when the atomic bombs were dropped and Japan capitulated. He gives an up-close-and-personal account of life in a bomber-fighter squadron and the roller-coaster emotions involved in combat sorties over the hostile sea and land.As a member of VBF-87, Vernon offers a unique glimpse into the past at a time when teenagers matured rapidly as they faced the realities of war. He has recorded his own feelings about meeting the challenges of war, his love of flying, and the camaraderie of his flying mates–both in the air and on liberty–along with the factual details of battle that contribute important dimensions to the overall story of the air war. Added to these stirring memories are his entertaining descriptions of the mobilization and training of carrier pilots and his recounting of the high incidence of non-combat fatalities and the change in the composition of the air group in response to the Kamikaze threat. Such a book not only will appeal to aviators everywhere but also will prove to be a thrilling read for those interested in World War II and air combat.
Distant Strangers
What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern?<BR /><BR /> In <I>Distant Strangers</I>, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers.<BR /><BR /> Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.