A comprehensive biography of the guiding hand behind naval aviation, by Trimble (History/Auburn University). Today, the US Navy's air force plays a vital role in protecting American interests throughout the world, but it took the efforts of stubborn visionaries to win acceptance of idea of the offensive capabilities of air power. Chief among the Navy's visionaries was Rear Adm. William A. Moffett (1869-1933), head of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics from its inception in 1921 until his death at sea in 1933, when he went down with the dirigible Akron during an Atlantic storm. At the Bureau, Moffett, using well- honed political skills, took on the forces and laws impeding the development of naval aviation: the ``battleship mentality'' of other Navy chiefs; Congressional budget-cutters; the federally mandated policy of strictly competitive bidding, which Moffett saw as a threat to the viability of the aircraft-manufacturing industry; and, most irritating to Moffett, maverick Army Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, who envisioned a unified national air force, preferably under his own command. Countering Mitchell, Moffett insisted that because of the Navy's special requirements, naval aviation must remain a part of its parent service. Fighting the Navy's own bureaucracy, he campaigned for autonomy in the selection, retention, and pay of naval aviation personnel, as well as for recognition of service in the Navy's air arm as equivalent to seagoing service. Among Moffett's successes was the development of the aircraft carrier as a major component of the US fleet; among his failures was the metal-framed, rigid, lighter-than-air airship (not to be confused with the nonrigid blimp), whose long flight endurance and high lift capability failed to outweigh its vulnerability to severe weather. An admiring life that will remind readers that there's more to naval-aviation history than Top Gun and the Tailhook scandal. (Thirty-seven b&w photographs)
Pub Date: Dec. 9, 1993
ISBN: 1-56098-320-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
