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Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story
Most lifting bodies, or “flying bathtubs” as they were called, were so ugly only an engineer could love them, and yet, what an elegant way to keep wings from burning off in supersonic flight between earth and orbit. Working in their spare time (because they couldn’t initially get official permission), Dale Reed and his team of engineers demonstrated the potential of the design that led to the Space Shuttle.
Wingless Flight takes us behind the scenes with just the right blend of technical information and fascinating detail (the crash of M2-F2 found new life as the opening credit for TV’s ...Read More
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A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929
Agriculture is the most fundamental of all human activities. Today, those who till the soil or tend livestock feed a world population of approximately 6.5 billion. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained such a large population, and according to present projections, farmers will have to feed nine billion people by 2050. The greatest agricultural revolution in history has occurred in the last fifty years , with farmers in the United States leading the way. America’s declining number of farms, however, comes as a surprise to many and may have dramatic implications. Paul K. Conkin’s A Revolution Down ...Read More
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American Women and Flight since 1940
Women run wind tunnel experiments, direct air traffic, and fabricate airplanes. American women have been involved with flight from the beginning, but until 1940, most people believed women could not fly, that Amelia Earhart was an exception to the rule. World War II changed everything. “It is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” stated General Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces. The question became “Should women fly?” Deborah G. Douglas tells the story of this ongoing debate and its impact on American history. From Jackie Cochran, whose perseverance led to the ...Read More
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Constantine Samuel Rafinesque: A Voice in the American Wilderness
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was a quintessential nineteenth-century American scientist and naturalist. Exalted by some, cursed by others, Rafinesque gave Latin names to over 6,700 plant species, was acknowledged by Darwin for his early insights into biological variation, and is frequently mentioned in the great natural history archives. Yet he has been almost forgotten in our own day. During his long career, which included some five years as an innovative professor at Transylvania University in Kentucky, Rafinesque’s colorful and sometimes difficult personality led to troubles with his colleagues. In Constantine Samuel Rafinesque , the first full-length biography of this brilliant, original, ...Read More
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The History and Practice of College Health
This volume is the first definitive reference and textbook in the one-hundred-fifty year history of college health. Written for professionals and for those working in student services and higher education administration, it covers the history of college health, administrative matters including financing and accreditation, and clinical issues such as women’s health, HIV/AIDS, and mental health. The book also focuses on prevention, including immunization and tuberculin testing. The contributors are well respected in the field and are actively working in the specific areas on which they write.
H. Spencer Turner, MD, is director of the University Health Service and clinical professor ...Read More
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Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry
Conventional wisdom credits only entrepreneurs with the vision to create America’s commercial airline industry and contends that it was not until Roosevelt’s Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 that federal airline regulation began. In Airlines and Air Mail, F. Robert van der Linden persuasively argues that Progressive republican policies of Herbert Hoover actually fostered the growth of American commercial aviation. Air mail contracts provided a critical indirect subsidy and a solid financial foundation for this nascent industry. Postmaster General Walter F. Brown used these contracts as a carrot and a stick to ensure that the industry developed in the public interest ...Read More
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Expanding the Envelope: Flight Research at NACA and NASA
Expanding the Envelope is the first book to explore the full panorama of flight research history, from the earliest attempts by such nineteenth century practitioners as England’s Sir George Cayley, who tested his kites and gliders by subjecting them to experimental flight, to the cutting-edge aeronautical research conducted by the NACA and NASA.
Michael H. Gorn explores the vital human aspect of the history of flight research, including such well-known figures as James H. Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and A. Scott Crossfield, as well as the less heralded engineers, pilots, and scientists who also had the “Right Stuff.” While the individuals ...Read More
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Pseudo-Science and Society in 19th-Century America
Progressive nineteenth-century Americans believed firmly that human perfection could be achieved with the aid of modern science. To many, the science of that turbulent age appeared to offer bright new answers to life's age-old questions. Such a climate, not surprisingly, fostered the growth of what we now view as “pseudo-sciences"—disciplines delicately balancing a dubious inductive methodology with moral and spiritual concerns, disseminated with a combination of aggressive entrepreneurship and sheer entertainment.
Such “sciences" as mesmerism, spiritualism, homoeopathy, hydropathy, and phrenology were warmly received not only by the uninformed and credulous but also by the respectable and educated. Rationalistic, egalitarian, and ...Read More
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David Wendel Yandell: Physician of Old Louisville
David Wendel Yandell was the most distinguished physician of a family noted for its contributions to the medical profession over a period of generations. Like his father before him, Yandell taught for many years at the Medical Department of the University of Louisville.
His years as a Confederate surgeon impressed upon him the horrifying consequences of the inadequate preparation of most physicians. Concerned especially about the need for practical training, Yandell waged a twenty-year campaign to expand clinic facilities and introduce intern programs at his own school and across the nation. He also fought for higher professional standards on a ...Read More
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Medicine in Kentucky
In this informed and entertaining essay, John H. Ellis describes the efforts of physicians and laymen to keep illness at bay during Kentucky's first 200 years. Medicine in Kentucky is part of the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf, "a celebration of two centuries of the history and culture of The Commonwealth.
John H. Ellis outlines the practice and development of medicine in Kentucky from the state of medical practices during the colonial era and the paucity of trained practitioners, to the frontier doctors of the early days of Westward expansion, to the founding of the first medical school chartered in the West, ...Read More
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