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Carl Gamble, a premier airline pilot, has penned a remarkable memoir, a powerful story about his journey from the cotton fields of Madison County, Alabama, to the captain’s seat flying jumbo jets between North America and Europe. While in grade school, jet fighters flying over Madison from a nearby Air Force Base captured his attention. Gamble’s dream to become a pilot was born. Gamble’s disciplined and focused work overcame an inauspicious start studying aviation at Tennessee State University, a stepping stone toward a flying career for African Americans of small means in the 1960s. The United States Air Force awarded Gamble its coveted Distinguished Flying Cross. His quick thinking and superior flying skills enabled him to land his C-47, severely disabled by enemy antiaircraft fire, and save the lives of his crew in Vietnam. My Blue Yonder tells Gamble’s story by taking you to his boyhood home, into the cockpit of his crippled plane, and into his PTSD. You fly with him to rescue men adrift on an ice floe in Lake Superior, refuel combat aircraft at four hundred miles per hour over the Gulf of Tonkin, and negotiate with a hijacker while flying in a holding pattern off the coast of Florida. A memorable quote passed through generations of pilots, and a favorite of Gamble’s, is, “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.” Similarly, pilots have landed burning airplanes and pilots have dealt with hijackers. Gamble is potentially the first pilot to experience both. -
"Two-Pound Baby Wins Life Fight" Imbalanced traces Sheri Thomas' remarkable journey from a front-page headline in 1962 to her current role as an advocate fighting to remove the stigmas surrounding physical disabilities and mental health. Unflinching, poignant and humorous, Imbalanced is her personal account of juggling lifelong challenges-including cerebral palsy, migraines and brain surgery-with a successful career before unexpectedly facing serious mental health crises in her fifties. -
The generation of young men who grew up in the shadow of World War II but were too young to fight came of age idealizing patriotism and adventure. They burned to live life to the fullest and do their part in the Cold War. In 1951, when BAYARD FOX graduated from Yale, the CIA promised a unique opportunity to do both by serving as a double agent. Assigned to Europe, the Congo, and Iran, Fox—who spoke several languages and was always game to learn new ones— grew disillusioned and resigned after 12 years. Soon after, a horse he was riding cartwheeled on him, shattering his hip. After organizing local fishermen in the Solomon Islands while swimming and diving for two years of rehabilitation, he was able to walk and ride again. Fox bought a ranch in the mountains of Wyoming, 17 miles from the nearest paved road and telephone, and set out with his family on his life’s true work: a sustainable, benevolent, ethical relationship with nature and the animals and people who thrive in it. This eloquent and brave autobiography of a solitary pioneer evokes those of other men on horseback, such as T.E. Lawrence and Teddy Roosevelt. Their dazzling physical exploits and success in battle made them legendary in their lifetimes, apart from the historical roles for which we remember them. Fox, at 92, reveals a similarly rich life of impossible adventures—and of hardships mastered by grit and mysterious good fortune—in his own spare and unsparing voice. You’ll be riveted and grateful to discover it before he and his generation’s other remaining survivors ride ahead over the last ridge. -
“Oh God! I’m coming!" What does sex have to do with God? What does God have to do with sex? Have you ever wondered about that connection? I have: it’s been the central conundrum of my entire life. In my early years, I felt painfully split. That pain has driven me on a life-long quest to fathom the depths of both sex and spirit: to explore their many mysteries and to find where they may be connected. What follows in this spiritual travelog are the highs and lows, the struggles and insights, and most of all the amazing grace that has guided me on a totally transformational life journey. Many inspiring teachers have gradually guided me to experience sex and love as vehicles to a deep connection with God, which I now understand to be the pure consciousness and love that is who we all are. If you share even a little of my fascination with the God-sex connection, I invite you to join me on that journey, to share my discoveries, and to make discoveries of your own along the way. Even if you do not identify with my early struggles as a guilt-ridden Catholic gay boy, stick around. I believe you’ll agree that many of my discoveries are relevant to all of us, regardless of our gender or sexual orientation. I want to see a world where people celebrate our sexuality in ways that are affirming of our lust and our love. I want us all to live with our genitals, hearts, and souls in happy harmony. Is that possible? Join me to learn more. -
Rachel likes to think of herself as a nice Jewish girl, dedicated to doing what’s honorable, just as her parents raised her to do. But when her husband, David, survives a plane crash and is left with severe brain damage, she faces a choice: will she dedicate her life to caring for a man she no longer loves, or walk away? Their marriage had been rocky at the time of the accident, and though she wants to do the right thing, Rachel doesn’t know how she is supposed to care for two kids in addition to a now irrational, incontinent, and seizure-prone grown man. And how will she manage to see her lover? But then again, what kind of selfish monster would refuse to care for her disabled husband, no matter how unhappy her marriage had been? Rachel wants to believe that she can dedicate her life to David’s needs, but knows in her heart it is impossible. Crash tackles a pervasive dilemma in our culture: the moral conflicts individuals face when caregiving for a disabled or cognitively impaired family member. -
CALLED A True Story -
Sir Isaac Newton famously complained about “action at a distance.” How was it possible, he wrote, that gravity, or attraction, operated between objects without physical contact? Well, jump to the twenty-first century, and we have a lot more to say about that. Readers will enjoy a brilliant, outrageous, playful exploration of quantum physics in everyday life, from a secret interplay of TV plots with us, in electricity, to other speculations, founded in the author’s decades of initiations as well as being an original thinker and a scholar.
An unusual feature of the illustrations in AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA is a technique called “computer-PK,” or mind through matter in the creation of printouts that refocus the text on-screen in the printing so that nothing happens twice. As in Einstein’s “Credo,” the author exemplifies: “The most beautiful and deepest experience [one] can have is the sense of the mysterious.”Even more amazing is that you include the most subtle levels of existence that play a role in these processes. An Underground PRINCIPIA connects life purpose, spirituality, depth psychology, and quantum physics into one all-encompassing movement.
