Product Description
The life that inspired the major motion picture The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese.

Howard Hughes has always fascinated the public with his mixture of secrecy, dashing lifestyle, and reclusiveness. This is the book that breaks through the image to get at the man. 80 photographs. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

really interesting read
Ever since I saw the movie The Aviator years ago I have been fascinated with Howard Hughes. He was so inventive and creative with cinematography and aviation design, yet had so many personal issues with undiagnosed OCD.It is amazing how he was actually able to still manage his empire from his film screening room and write detailed notes on how to execute his orders. This book actually includes some of his personal writings.If you are into Howard Hughes history then this book is one stop source of pretty much everything on this great but troubled man, from his childhood until his sad death.

The only authentic biography of Howard Hughes
This book accurately follows the life of Howard Hughes from beginning to end. It is accurate and definitive.I worked for Hughes for 32 years and participated in some of the events set forth in the book. I have never found anything inaccurate in the book. It is the only dependable biography of this great man.

Comprehensive, to a fault
I was intrigued about this man, Howard Hughes for 2 reasons: I am a business owner as well as a history buff. Mr. Hughes is definitely a part of the fabric of American history. Many interesting details emerged from this book. In fact, therein lies the probelm with the book, if one can call it as such; too many details, too many little facts, and way too many factoids to read. I found myself skimming the last 100+ pages, simply because I wanted to finish it and get on to the next book on my reading list. I would recommend this book with one cavaet: the "devil is in the details".

Very well researched biography
I find Howard Hughes to have been an utterly fascinating person and this book is about as thoroughly researched as a bio can be. Although I did enjoy it a great deal, I thought it got bogged down in too many details about the many many business dealings that Hughes was involved with, whether directly or those being done in his name. I wanted to learn more about Hughes the man rather than quite so much about his accomplishments and failures as an entrepeneur. I found myself becoming less interested in the book as it reached the period of Hughes' live where he became less and less interested in the world around him and was basically just surviving until his body gave out on him. Perhaps it is inevitable that the reader feel this way. That aside, if you want to learn about Howard Hughes this book is probably the best resource you'll find.

HOWARD HUGHES
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I HAVE READ ON THIS PATHETIC FIGURE.HE HAD SO MUCH IN HIS LIFE, BUT THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO USED HIM INSTEAD OF HELPING HIM.THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN PROSECUTED FOR THEIR CRIMES. ... Read more

Product Description
Howard Hughes lived one of the greatest, most heroic, misunderstood, mysterious, bizarre, and tragic lives in American history.Here, at last, in a uniquely full and brilliantly documented biography by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team, the mythology that surrounded that life is disentangled from the truth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The best Howard Hughes bookyou'll ever find!
This book answers the question, "How did he get to be that way?" It delves deeply into his relationship with his mother (and lack of one with his father) and follows him into adulthood.He seems a little eccentric but still within the normal range for most of his early life.He lived lavishly, but his demons caught up with him eventually. The pity is it didn't have to be that way.

I read this book when it was on the Best Sellers list.Howard Hughes was the subject of one of my papers for a psychology class and this book was my main source.

Unshrouds the mystery with facts, not speculations
The Life, Legend, and Madness offers an in-depth view into the secretive life of Howard Hughes.Unbiased in its writing, the book focuses on all of Hughes accomplishments and successes, as well as some of the darker aspects of his life.After reading this book, one can really see that Hughes is one of the few "larger than life" characters that ever lived.

Hughes played an integral role in shaping this country, a role unknown to many of today's younger generations.Donald Barlett and James Steele do an amazing job detailing both his accomplishments and private life.Some of his endeavors are less obvious today than others, such as helping transform Las Vegas into the resort town we know today.Many people are unfamiliar with the Hughes Medical Institute or the creations from the Hughes Aircraft Company.Although the book does show his odd lifestyle behind the darkened windows and closed doors, it is fair in that it also accurately focuses on his important business dealings.

The popular movie "The Aviator" seems to be scripted largely from the first half of this book.To fully appreciate the movie, I recommend reading this particular book first.Not only will it help clarify references that may slip by in the movie, but this book shows that Hughes was much more than a movie producer who flirted with Hollywood's divas of the day.He was a master engineer, expert businessman, and defender of Democracy (he furiously fought Communists).Innovative people like Hughes is what America is all about.

Excellent Insight into the Life and Empire of Howard Hughes
After reading other books on Howard Hughes, I thought this book would be a waste of my time since I'd "read everything else" but little did I know that this book went into such detail of his life, exposing in great detail specifics that other books briefly mentioned.

Howard Hughes, Naked
The story of Howard Hughes, told superbly in this classic bio, is simply magnetic.How else could you describe a tale that begins with young Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. being born into one of Texas's wealthiest oil families (his father's company, Hughes Tool Company, held a virtual monopoly on drill-bits for many years), moving to Califoria to become a movie mogul, pioneering aviation, heading TWA, and then slipping into degenerative obsessive madness that rendered him completely in the hands of his manipulative underlings.Thus in this book we confront both the young, energetic Hughes (romantically linked to both Jane Russell and Katharine Hepburn) and the old, sick hughes - a nudist who left his hair and fingernails uncut for years, chronicly addicted to codeine, flitting between vacuum-sealed hotel rooms in diffent countries (Bahamas, Nicaragua, Toronto, London, etc.), yet whose name continued to command terror and respect among presidents and governors.

As I read this book, there were many Hughes habits that I found deeply endearing, even as the weird details mounted.How can you not like a guy who, in the pre-VCR era, decided to buy the local Nevada TV station, just so they'd play the movies he wanted?Who - upon installing his home entertainment system - had an obsessive-compulsive need to watch the epic 1968 thriller "Ice Station Zebra" over and over again?(It's a good movie, after all.)Who bought up half of the real estate of Nevada in a doomed expectation of a world gold shortage?Or who lent his name to the ocean-dredging vessel, Glomar Explorer, to aid the CIA's covert attempts to refloat a Soviet sub?And there was something genuinely visionary about the way he built his aircraft and electronics empires.Indeed, despite the piles of carefully-compiled evidence of financial disasters at TWA, RKO, Air West and Summa Corporation, somehow I want to believe that Hughes was not the bungling sicko that emerges from these pages, but so what if he was, the story remains magnificent.

The Demise of an Empire
Donald Bartlett and James Steel's book, "Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes" is an excellent example of journalistic reporting converted into book form; the book is simply fascinating to read. The authors accomplish the gargantuan task of separating fact from fiction in the very complex life of Howard Hughes."Empire" is impeccably researched and documented; It is a bona fide biography that reads more like fiction than real life-such was the world of Howard Hughes.

"Empire" traces the rise and tragic fall of Howard Hughes; a man who wore many hats, he was an aviator, Hollywood movie producer, Las Vegas hotel/casino owner ... and a recluse.For one brief shining moment, Hughes was considered one of America's premier aviators, breaking flying records, but then falling out of grace with government and the aviation industry for breaking contract deadlines. In the long run, Howard Hughes would become a grand failure in the world of big business.

Bartlett and Steel show the reader a man who had everything to live for, good looks, fame, fortune, power and prestige, but he was unable to triumph over his social and physical phobias that led to psychological, emotional, and physical illnesses and to his final descent into the dwellings of the insane. Hughes' deep mistrust of all people-even family, worked against him and led to his demise and the lose of his billion dollar empire by the very people whose job it was to safeguard him and his empire.

By the time I finished reading "Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes, I was much more accepting of my status as a non wealthy individual. Although Howard Hughes had everything a man could possibly wish for, he was underprivileged in peace of mind.... The authors do a superb job in separating fact from myth in the life of Howard Hughes. The book is worth reading.
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Product Description
Word count: 1572. ... Read more

Product Description
In this award-winning biography, the editor of the most popular edition of The Canterbury Tales re-creates the public, private, and poetic life and times of this extraordinary man. 16-page photo insert. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Important Introduction
This is an important introduction to, as the book's title says, the life, times, and works of Geoffrey Chaucer. For those who are thoroughly versed in the 14th century, or who are intimately familiar with Chaucer scholarship, this work will probably be a rehashing of familiar ground. However, as an introduction for a budding scholar or amateur enthusiast in history or literature, this work is second to none. This book is highly readable, even for those with a casual interest in the subject.

I took a class on Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", and I read this book as a prelude to the course. I feel that this work provided me with crucial context for Chaucer and his world, and enabled me to appreciate reading the "Tales" in their original Middle English at a much greater level. Thank you Dr. Howard!

comprehensive biography
Extensively detailed biography of this medieval great poet, of interest to anyone interested in the intricacies of medieval history and literature. Definitely not for the dilettante, though much of it is quite readable.
The book is approximately evenly divided between history and literary analysis.We learn of Chaucer's role as a soldier in the wars with France; of his role as appointed court poet and custom's officer; of the black death; of his travels to Italy; we are given a great deal of detail about his literary influences on the Continent and his major literary works, not limited tothe Canterbury Tales.Really more for the literary medieval scholar, though anyone interested in history might like it. We learn that Chaucer was probably in London at the time of the Peasants' Revolt. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The "Blueprint" for all UFO debunkers...
Dr. Donald Menzel (1901-1976) was an influential and politically well-connected astronomer at Harvard University. However, he also has the distinction of being the first famous UFO "debunker", and he used his contacts within the US government and scientific community to discourage any attempt to treat the UFO phenomenon seriously. In Menzel's view, UFOs were "pseudoscientific nonsense" and a "space-age myth". In 1953 he wrote the first-ever UFO "debunking" book, "Flying Saucers", in which he attempted to provide prosaic explanations for every major UFO sighting since 1947.

In his second UFO Book, "The World of Flying Saucers", Menzel offers new explanations for UFO sightings covered in his 1953 book, and he also covers most of the UFO incidents of the fifties and early sixties. Recent research by UFO historians has revealed that Menzel was actually strangely obsessed with "flying saucers", and also obsessed with humiliating or even threatening anyone who held a different view of UFOs from his own. James Moseley, who has skeptically covered the UFO phenomenon since the fifties, writes in his memoirs that he received playful, detailed drawings from Menzel of "Martians" and UFO "crewmen" cavorting with naked alien girls! Edward Ruppelt, a USAF Captain who supervised the Air Force's famed "Project Blue Book" investigation into the UFO mystery in the early fifties, wrote that in a 1952 meeting Menzel claimed to have "all the answers" regarding the UFO mystery, but when several scientists openly challenged Menzel's conclusions that all UFOs were hoaxes, mirages, or temperature inversions, Menzel at first "hedged his answers" and finally "blew his stack" and stormed out of the room. In 1949 Menzel had his own UFO sighting, which he reported to the Air Force. In his three UFO books, however, Menzel claimed to have "solved" the sighting as a "reflection of the Moon off of haze". However, UFO historian Jerome Clark has argued that Menzel actually changed the facts of his own sighting in order to "explain" it, and that the details of the sighting he gave in his original AF report don't match his descriptions of the incident listed in his books years later.

In "The World Of Flying Saucers" Menzel does create the "blueprint" which would be followed by nearly all UFO debunkers, from the 1960's to the present day. Menzel describes the UFO phenomenon as a "myth of the space age" - much as witches and fairies were the "myths" of earlier historical eras. According to Menzel, all UFO reports are explainable as hoaxes, mirages, weather balloons, or some other "conventional" phenomena. What is particularly striking about this book is that Menzel approaches every UFO case not with the objective eye and open mind of a true scientist, but with the utterly close-minded assumption that, since UFOs can't possibly exist, any prosaic explanation, no matter how far-fetched, is better than admitting that a case is "unsolved" or "unexplained". A few examples will illustrate the main thrust of Menzel's debunking approach: in his examination of the Nash-Fortenberry case of 1952, in which two Pan American Airline pilots spotted six strange objects flying in formation over Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, Menzel at first claimed the pilots had seen "city lights reflecting off haze, clouds, or humidity". When weather records clearly showed that there was no haze, clouds, or other inversion-causing weather, an undaunted Menzel claimed that the two pilots had actually been fooled by fireflies trapped between the panes of glass in their cockpit! When Dr. James McDonald, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona and a prominent Menzel critic, pointed out the absurdity of such a claim, Menzel responded by calling McDonald a "pseudoscientist" and a "crank" - without ever specifically responding to McDonald's criticisms of his explanation.

In "The World of Flying Saucers", Menzel offers several completely different explanations for the Kenneth Arnold UFO case. Arnold, a successful businessman and private pilot, spotted nine "flying disks" in Washington State in 1947, and the headlines resulting from his story led to the first great wave of UFO sightings in America. Menzel claims that Arnold either saw a "mirage" or an unusual cloud formation - yet both of these explanations fly in the face of Arnold's testimony. (In his other two books Menzel offers three additional explanations for Arnold's sighting). Menzel refused to do any field research when investigating UFO cases, and he also refused to personally interview the UFO eyewitnesses. Instead, his solutions came almost entirely from sitting in his home or office and examining the testimony and transcripts of UFO sightings, which possibly accounts for the fact that his "explanations" for UFO cases often run contrary to the testimony of the witnesses and other researchers. Bottom line: Menzel's "The World Of Flying Saucers" is worth reading for the simple fact that Menzel is still regarded as the "godfather" of all UFO debunkers. If you read this book you will find that virtually all other UFO debunking books, such as those of Philip Klass, Robert Sheaffer, and Curtis Peebles, have simply copied Menzel's debunking approach. However, if you wish to read a truly scientific and objective approach to the UFO phenomenon, then you'd be well-advised to look elsewhere. ... Read more

Product Description
Howard Down-Home is the true story of an American life.The author writes about his life while growing up on a farm in rural eastern North Carolina.From his earliest days he became familiar with corn, tobacco, cotton, chickens, hogs, cattle, mules and all kinds of farm machinery.There were days of fun and days of hard work.

Fun days included riding his bicycle across the open fields on frozen snow.There were days of exploring the woodlands alone near his home.There were trips into the woods to pick huckleberries.There were nights spent sleeping out in the open during summer and creative ideas employed in catching chickens for market.

Hard workdays were those spent in the tobacco fields pulling green tobacco leaves for drying.Long days were spent in the cornfields loading dry ears of corn into a mule-drawn cart for transportation to the corncrib.There were hot days spent in the top of a tobacco barn hanging tobacco for drying.And there were long days behind mule-drawn plows preparing land for planting and cultivating young crops.

After the farm the author tells about his four years in the United States Air Force.The military offered a very different way of life, one the author found interesting, humorous, adventurous, and enriching.His travels with the Air Force took him to many different stations and adventures.

Upon leaving the military the author decided to train to become a professional educator.After completing his educational training to the doctoral level he spent 34 four years in education where he served as a teacher and administrator at all levels of education from kindergarten to the university graduate level.The adventures, people and experiences the author encountered during a long personal voyage are shared in this true story of an American life, a life that took advantage of opportunities in the land of the free. ... Read more

Product Description
Delivers fundamentals of risk management as a means to complement, benefit, and promote all areas of business planning. With focus on relevant risk management basics, discover that the process involves more than the core activities of making and growing clients assets. The planning process consists of proactively uncovering wealth preservation objectives specific to needs today s practitioner faces. Insurance, PACE, and CFP® CE Filed.
Comprehensive coverage consists of:


Enterprise & traditional risk management
Loss control & claims management
Alternative risk & contractual transfer
Global exposures
Disaster planning
Broker & vendor relationships





Testimonials
In each of our books we had one major goal in mind: To create the single best source of up-to-date, pragmatic and transferable information on the topics you need to help others.

Stephan R. Leimberg, Lead Author of Tools & Techniques ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good collection of articles
In recent years, with the widespread interest in the control of thermonuclear energy, there has been a great rise in the study of highly ionized gases, or plasmas. Within this area of study there have been broadly two avenues of approach: the work of the plasma physicist (and related workers) and the work of the astrophysicist, who has been observing and interpreting similar phenomena in stars and nebulae.

Astrophysical analysis and interpretation (by spectroscopy) began with pioneering work upon hydrogen. This work was extended later into the study of many types of physical processes in highly ionized gases, including both radiative and collisional interactions with atoms other than hydrogen. These studies, which have hitherto appeared only in periodicals and have not been generally available, are now recognized as
basic to many areas of physics and geophysics, and their general theory is applicable to many problems other than those of nebulae.

Professor Menzel, one of the foremost contributors in this field, has selected 30 such papers with the assistance of Dr. L. H. Aller. They include a paper on the theory of hydrogenic spectra, and 18 papers upon the physical processes in gaseous nebulae, covering problems of radiation and radiative transfer, the Balmer decrement, electron temperatures, excitation, electron densities, spectrophotometry, statistical equilibrium of neutral helium, the abundance of 0 III, fluorescence in high-excitation planetaries, and the chemical composition of planetary nebulae. The third portion of the book is devoted to 10 papers on the interpretation of nebular spectra, covering electron velocity distribution, multiplet intensities, spectrophotometry, thermal effects, and various spectral analyses. The final paper is concerned with the intensities of "forbidden" spectral lines. ... Read more