Böcker av H. Bruce Franklin

In this gripping memoir, renowned historian former Air Force navigator and intelligence officer H. Bruce Franklin offers a unique firsthand look at the American Century’s darkest hours. Crash Course is essential reading for anyone who wonders how America ended up with a deeply divided and disillusioned populace, led by a dysfunctional government and mired in unwinnable wars.

This selection of unusual stories challenges the commonly held belief that science fiction is a twentieth century phenomenon, or that it began with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Here are tales of marvellous inventions, automata, biological and psychological experiments, utopias, extra-sensory perception and time and space travel.

In this brilliant portrait of the oceans' unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America's national-and natural-history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. Since Native Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this amazing fish has greased the wheels of U.S. agriculture and industry. By the mid-1870s, menhaden had replaced whales as a principal source of industrial lubricant, with hundreds of ships and dozens of factories along the eastern seaboard working feverishly to produce fish oil. Since the Civil War, menhaden have provided the largest catch of any American fishery. Today, one company-Omega Protein-has a monopoly on the menhaden "e;reduction industry."e; Every year it sweeps billions of fish from the sea, grinds them up, and turns them into animal feed, fertilizer, and oil used in everything from linoleum to health-food supplements. The massive harvest wouldn't be such a problem if menhaden were only good for making lipstick and soap. But they are crucial to the diet of bigger fish and they filter the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, playing an essential dual role in marine ecology perhaps unmatched anywhere on the planet. As their numbers have plummeted, fish and birds dependon them have been decimatedand toxic algae have begun to choke our bays and seas. In Franklin's vibrant prose, the decline of a once ubiquitous fish becomes an adventure story, an exploration of the U.S. political economy, a groundbreaking history of America's emerging ecological consciousness, and an inspiring vision of a growing alliance between environmentalists and recreational anglers.

This paperback edition of M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America adds major new material about Ross Perot's role, the 1991-1992 Senate investigation, and illegal operations authorized by Ronald Reagan. "A calm and thoughtful book on a firestorm of a subject.... Intelligent, provocative, and courageous."" - Kirkus Reviews