The significant constitutional, political, intellectual, economic, and foreign policy trends and issues that have shaped the course of American history; and the key episodes, turning points, and leading figures involved in the constitutional, political, intellectual, diplomatic, and economic history of the United States.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) is one of the most enduring works of American literature, capturing the mischief, adventure, and freedom of boyhood along the banks of the Mississippi River. But reading it in 2025, especially for someone accustomed to modern storytelling, can feel like stepping into a world that requires both patience and adjustment.
At its heart, Tom Sawyer is a coming-of-age story about a clever, rebellious boy navigating childhood in a small town during the 19th century. He tricks his friends into painting a fence for him, gets lost in a cave, witnesses a murder, and hunts for buried treasure. The book is filled with humor, adventure, and a nostalgia for youth that remains universal. However, Twain’s writing, while brilliant, can be challenging for contemporary readers. His prose is layered with dialect, long-winded descriptions, and a vocabulary that may feel overly ornate compared to today’s more direct, streamlined fiction. That’s not necessarily a flaw, it’s a product of its time, but it does mean the novel demands more effort than a fast-paced thriller or even most modern young adult books.
Nick Offerman takes us on a journey where nature meets unburdened thoughts.
Nick Offerman is known for his stoic, anti-government persona Ron Swanson. In the 2021 book “Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside”, he is a staunch advocate for agrarianism. In other words the social and political philosophy that advocates for a return to subsistence agriculture, family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. I read it with mixed emotions from relatable excitement about the great outdoors to sheer disagreement about historical facts.
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play is a three part storyline that appears to be loosely connected in time. The first part centers around the great outdoors. The second part is about farming. The third part reminded me a wee bit of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley In Search of America”. Offerman uses a clear and creative voice to lay out his themes which seem to start with the land and concludes in critique of societal and government use of it. While the accounts of getting a group of friends wandering into the wild to reset, rediscover, and enjoy mother nature are truly inspiring, I found it hard to read through the political commentary that weaved like an eel through every other sentence. It is undoubtedly difficult to take a political position when your line of business is entertainment. I admire his openness about his positions, but question his judgment to conflate them with storylines depicted in this book. Perhaps, it would have been more digestible if it were balanced across the political spectrum beyond Democrats and Republicans, because both sides are not a black and white chunk of failed or successful policies and there are more than those two major parties.
A wonderful feature of this book is by far the longing it ignites to explore a remote location. Even if you can’t afford to travel to Yosemite and hike Glacier Point. Your closest ridge, hill, or mountain will do. Furthermore, Offerman makes insightful points about how we use our resources and what it really means to be a self-sustaining society. Lastly, my favorite part was simply talking shop – the thrill of working with wood; the blessing of boating a body of water; or, simply adoring mother nature and the beauty that we – as Americans of these United States – can find if we dare to venture outside.
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play is a mixed bag. Although it can delight nature and adventure fans, its preachy moments can feel like being shouted at from a soapbox, leaving an unpleasant residue.
On a side note: the artwork on the dust jacket is beyond beautiful with color, font, and design outcompeting for the spotlight.
The death of Matthew Perry made me reflect on my emotional response to a stranger’s passing. I found intriguing research that explores the psychological concept of parasocial relationships and cybermourning to help me understand why I experience a sensation of loss when an entertainer’s final curtain is lowered.
tl;dr Using thematic analysis, the researcher studied 1,299 condolences posted on the obituary website Legacy.com to come up with themes that opened the window to cybermourning and parasocial relationships on the night worldly-famous comedian and actor Robin Williams hanged himself, August, 11, 2014. In addition to the themes that emerged, loss, appreciation and celebration, the study revealed that a majority of cybermourners had developed a deep parasocial relationship with Williams and viewed him as more than a comedian. They saw him as a close friend or relative who had died. The deeply emotional posts outnumbered two to one the posts from cybermourners whose condolences were respectful, short and generic. Fans also shared intimate life struggles associated with drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness with their virtual “close” friend Williams who was also struggling with the same demons. This paper discusses cybermourning, parasocial relationships and the pros and cons of such online relationships.
On October 28, 2023 news broke about the passing of television actor and “Friends” star Matthew Perry. The Hollywood Reporter described his passing feels like “when a Beatle dies”. Perry struggled with alcoholism his entire career and he was outspoken about mental health. I can’t remember when I first watched the show Friends. When I watched it, I never reached a level of binge-watching episode after episode. Yet the writers delivered a storyline so universally applicable that we, as the audience, really bought into a group of friends just trying to grow up and find their place in this ever-expanding world. It was my story. It was your story. It was our story.
Perry’s passing reminded me of the deaths of other celebrities: Steve Jobs, Anthony Bourdain, Chester Bennington, Sean Connery, Paul Walker, Carrie Fisher, Kirstie Alley, Betty White, and many more. But perhaps most notable among them is Robin Williams. The paper starts by explaining the concept of cybermourning as a process to take grief to social media and immortalize it in cyberspace. Facebook will become a place where more deceased than alive profiles make up their account statistics. Websites like legacy.com offer a last farewell that can be revisited at all times. It is a collective experience as others are allowed to share their condolences. The concept of our human response to death itself is complex. Mankind has always mourned the passing of one of us. Mourning can be described as an elevated emotional grief induced by the outside event of the passing of a loved one. It does help to reunite those left behind, but it also serves as a healing period. On the other hand, parasocial relationships are a concept almost entirely tied to the onset of audiovisual communication technology, e.g. cinema, television, and streaming. It describes the identification of the viewer with the portrayed character. People seek out similarities, similar behaviors, and other personality traits. In extreme cases, people want to be that person (even when they know it is a fictional character that only exists in a Hollywood storyline). The internet and relentless news coverage impact the intensity of a parasocial relationship.
Against this backdrop, the author designed two research questions to study the public’s emotional response when actor Robin Williams died.
What themes explain how cybermourners mourned the night Williams died?
What happened to cybermourners who developed parasocial relationships with Williams?
The research reviewed 1,299 responses posted to the obituary page of Robin Williams on legacy.com. His page continues to receive postings to this day. They identified three themes among the posts: loss, appreciation, and celebration. Most strikingly, they found people had developed a near-intimate relationship with Robin Williams because of the shared emotional struggles, alcoholism, and humor that get us through the day. The internet’s permanent access and appearance of a “personal space” that lives on our computers or in our phones lowered inhibitions to share fears, secret desires, and vulnerable emotions associated with the career of Robin Williams.
Early psychological research suggested these types of parasocial relationships are linked to fears, isolation, and diminished social experiences. More recent research, however, found that parasocial relationships, and their natural end, may invoke cathartic effects that help people to develop a better understanding of themselves and the world around them. Cybermourning can provide a therapeutic relief that is shared by thousands or millions of others online. Therefore it can neutralize the experience of grief and sadness that commonly occur with learning about someone’s death. Lastly, it can raise awareness of the universal human struggle that we all experience – from addiction to mental health.
Matthew Perry playing Chandler on Friends helped millions of non-English speakers to learn English. The show introduced everyday cultural norms, although exaggerated, to an audience unfamiliar with American customs and traditions. This helped shape the social fabric of the United States. Anyone lucky to watch Friends during their late teenage years may look back fondly on the curiosity that surrounded social experiences, your first relationship, your first disagreement, your first job loss, your first financial struggle, and all these other experiences that we all universally endure and overcome.
Perhaps learning about Chandler’s passing made me reflect on my mortality and how fleeting this experience that we call life really is (loss). It is a stark reminder of the importance of healthy relationships, compassion, and compromise (appreciation) – but really that these things are worth working for because they are so rare and the cast of Friends made us whole showing us that (celebration).
Thoughts on Arthur Miller’s classic Americana drama “Death of a Salesman.”
I keep a stack of classic American literature near my desk. It’s my way to pay tribute to those who walked these United States before me. It’s also a means to expose myself to different genres and writing styles.
“Death of a Salesman” is written as a script for a theater play by infamous playwright Arthur Asher Miller. It centers around a middle-aged traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who is mentally disintegrating over his failed attempts to achieve the American Dream. The play’s structure is fluid and shifts abruptly between past, present, and ongoing or concluded stages of his life. I understand this to be used as a stylistic technique to demonstrate the mental breakdown of the main protagonist, Willy Loman, as the play unfolds. While this style is potent to make a point, it struck me as disruptive to my reading flow. Scripts require the reader to factor in the playwright’s scene interpretations, which adds a layer of complexity that I didn’t particularly enjoy.
The play is divided into two acts. Neither act has a headline, so bear with me as I label them:
Willy appears to suffer from burnout after a failed business trip. When he seeks to alleviate his pain by scaling back on work-related travel, he fails to convince his boss and gets himself laid off. This fuels his deteriorating mental state, which clings to the illusions of material success and his lack thereof. His overwhelming nostalgia makes him compare his children’s failures with his own, creating a deeply strained relationship with his sons that eventually culminates in confrontation and disappointment. It ends, of course, in tragedy.
This was a challenging read. Piecing together the puzzle that is Willy Loman’s mind is no easy feat, but, I think, it’s an analogy of the challenges we face in our own lives. The play reminded me of the actor Jim Carry’s father, who took a job he didn’t like to support a life he didn’t enjoy only to be let go at the age of 51. Arthur Miller described, in quite a similar fashion, this tragedy of our society that most of us live sad lives of quiet desperation to emulate, integrate, and do as we are told. It’s a cautionary tale and a bleak reminder of the stoic truth that death isn’t in the future but we die a little bit every day. Is it really worthwhile to spend your life living other people’s dreams? Death of a Salesman, like it or not, is an impetus to shift your thinking towards finding and pursuing your values and prioritize meaning over comfort.
This is my personal shortlist of classic and modern Air Force literature. Titles are selected by Air Force history, ongoing conflicts, and their relevancy to the future of aerial warfare, as well as leadership lessons, strategy, and tactics in aviation. Titles are ordered by their original publication date.
Ballistic Books is a series to present literature of interest. Each edition is dedicated to a specific topic. I found it challenging to discover and distinguish good from great literature. With this series, I aim to mitigate that challenge.
(2021) The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell
“In Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion.
In Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.” I read this book when it was first released. It still ranks high on my list of favorite books.
(2021) Call-Sign KLUSO: An American Fighter Pilot in Mr. Reagan’s Air Force by Rick Tollini
“Eagle pilot Rick “Kluso” Tollini’s life has embodied childhood dreams and the reality of what the American experience could produce. In his memoir, Call Sign KLUSO, Rick puts the fraught minutes above the Iraqi desert that made him an ace into the context of a full life; exploring how he came to be flying a F-15C in Desert Storm, and how that day became a pivotal moment in his life.
Rick’s first experience of flying was in a Piper PA-18 over 1960s’ California as a small boy, and his love of flying through his teenage years was fostered by his pilot father, eventually blossoming into a decision to join the Air Force as a pilot in his late twenties. Having trained to fly jets he was assigned to fly the F-15 Eagle with the “Dirty Dozen,” the 12th Tactical Fighter Squadron, at Kadena AB, Japan before returning Stateside to the 58th Tactical Fighter Squadron “The Gorillas.” Throughout training, Reagan’s fighter pilots expected to face the Soviet Union, but Rick’s first combat deployment was Desert Storm. He recounts the planning, the preparation, and the missions, the life of a fighter pilot in a combat zone and the reality of combat. Rick’s aerial victory was one of 16 accumulated by the Gorillas, the most by any squadron during Desert Storm.
Returning from the combat skies of Iraq, Rick continued a successful fulfilling Air Force career until, struggling to make sense of his life, he turned to Buddhism. His practice led him to leave the Air Force, to find a new vocation, and to finally come to terms with shooting down that MiG-25 Foxbat in the desert all those years before. Most importantly, he came to a deeper understanding of the importance of our shared humanity.”
(2019) Top Gun: An American Story by Dan Pedersen
“When American fighter jets were being downed at an unprecedented rate during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy turned to a young lieutenant commander, Dan Pedersen, to figure out a way to reverse their dark fortune. On a shoestring budget and with little support, Pedersen picked eight of the finest pilots to help train a new generation to bend jets like the F-4 Phantom to their will and learn how to dogfight all over again.
What resulted was nothing short of a revolution — one that took young American pilots from the crucible of combat training in the California desert to the blistering skies of Vietnam, in the process raising America’s Navy combat kill ratio from two enemy planes downed for every American plane lost to more than 22 to 1. Topgun emerged not only as an icon of America’s military dominance immortalized by Hollywood but as a vital institution that would shape the nation’s military strategy for generations to come.
Pedersen takes readers on a colorful and thrilling ride — from Miramar to Area 51 to the decks of aircraft carriers in war and peace-through a historic moment in air warfare. He helped establish a legacy that was built by him and his “Original Eight” — the best of the best — and carried on for six decades by some of America’s greatest leaders. Topgun is a heartfelt and personal testimony to patriotism, sacrifice, and American innovation and daring.”
(2019 Tomcat Fury: A Combat History of the F-14 by Mike Guardia
“For more than three decades, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy’s premier carrier-based, multi-role fighter jet. From its harrowing combat missions over Libya to its appearance on the silver screen in movies like Top Gun and Executive Decision, the F-14 has become an icon of American air power. Now, for the first time in a single volume, Tomcat Fury explores the illustrious combat history of the F-14: from the Gulf of Sidra…to the Iran-Iraq War…to the skies over Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror.”
(2017) Desert Storm Air War: The Aerial Campaign against Saddam’s Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War by Jim Corrigan
“The air campaign that opened the Gulf War in January 1991 was one of the most stunning in history. For five weeks, American and other Coalition aircraft pounded enemy targets with 88,000 tons of bombs. Sorties—more than 100,000 of them—were launched from bases in Saudi Arabia, from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and even from bases in the United States. The skies over Iraq and Kuwait were filled with a dizzying array of new and improved weapons—Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles, stealth aircraft, and laser-guided smart bombs—and the results were impressive. The Coalition swiftly established air superiority and laid the foundation for the successful five-day ground campaign that followed. The results were also highly visible as the American people watched the bombings unfold in grainy green video-game-like footage broadcast on CNN and the nightly news.
The overwhelming success of the Desert Storm air campaign has made it influential ever since, from the “shock and awe” bombing during the Iraq War in 2003 to more recent drone operations, but the apparent ease with which the campaign was won has masked the difficulty—and the true achievement—of executing such a vast and complex operation.
Using government reports, scholarly studies, and original interviews, Jim Corrigan reconstructs events through the eyes of not only the strategists who planned it, but also the pilots who flew the missions.”
(2012) Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat by Dan Hampton
“First into a war zone, flying behind enemy lines to purposely draw fire, the wild weasels are elite fighter squadrons with the most dangerous job in the Air Force
One of the greatest aviation memoirs ever written, Viper Pilot is an Air Force legend’s thrilling eyewitness account of modern air warfare. For twenty years, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hampton was a leading member of the Wild Weasels, logging 608 combat hours in the world’s most iconic fighter jet: the F-16 “Fighting Falcon,” or “Viper.” He spearheaded the 2003 invasion of Iraq, leading the first flight of fighters over the border en route to strike Baghdad. Earlier, on 9/11, Hampton’s father was inside the Pentagon when it was attacked; with his dad’s fate unknown, Hampton was scrambled into American skies and given the unprecedented orders to shoot down any unidentified aircraft.
Viper Pilot is an unforgettable look into the closed world of fighter pilots and modern air combat.”
(2002) Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
“John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever — the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country’s most legendary fighter aircraft — the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.
Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of fighter tactics changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights. He discovered a physical theory that forever altered the way fighter planes were designed. Later in life, he developed a theory of military strategy that has been adopted throughout the world and even applied to business models for maximizing efficiency. And in one of the most startling and unknown stories of modern military history, the Air Force fighter pilot taught the U.S. Marine Corps how to fight war on the ground. His ideas led to America’s swift and decisive victory in the Gulf War and foretold the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
On a personal level, Boyd rarely met a general he couldn’t offend. He was loud, abrasive, and profane. A man of daring, ferocious passion and intractable stubbornness, he was that most American of heroes — a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune but for his country. He was a true patriot, a man who made a career of challenging the shortsighted and self-serving Pentagon bureaucracy. America owes Boyd and his disciples — the six men known as the “Acolytes” — a great debt.
Robert Coram finally brings to light the remarkable story of a man who polarized all who knew him, but who left a legacy that will influence the military — and all of America — for decades to come”
(2001) The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant Tedrick Hammond
“The ideas of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd have transformed American military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilot and a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force’s premier fighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped the tactics that saved lives during the Vietnam War and the strategies that won the Gulf War. Many of America’s best-known military and political leaders consulted Boyd on matters of technology, strategy, and theory.
In The Mind of War, Grant T. Hammond offers the first complete portrait of John Boyd, his groundbreaking ideas, and his enduring legacy. Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and those who knew him as well as on a close analysis of Boyd’s briefings, this intellectual biography brings the work of an extraordinary thinker to a broader public. The paperback will retain the original publication date as it is the same book but different format.”
(1999) Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
“On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily-armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded. Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written—a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.”
(1995) Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing (Tom Clancy’s Military Reference) by Tom Clancy
“Tom Clancy’s explorations of America’s armed forces reveal exclusive, never-before-seen information on the people and technology that protect our nation. Here, the acclaimed author takes to the skies with the U.S. Air Force’s elite: the Fighter Wing. With his compelling style and unerring eye for detail, Clancy captures the thrill of takeoff, the drama of the dogfight, and the relentless dangers our fighter pilots face every day of their lives- showing readers what it really means to be the best of the best. This is the ultimate insider’s look at an Air Force combat wing-the planes, the technology, and the people…with Tom Clancy behind the stick.”
(1994) Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich
“From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, Skunk Works is the true story of America’s most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation’s brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds. Here are up-close portraits of the maverick band of scientists and engineers who made the Skunk Works so renowned. Filled with telling personal anecdotes and high adventure, with narratives from the CIA and from Air Force pilots who flew the many classified, risky missions, this book is a riveting portrait of the most spectacular aviation triumphs of the twentieth century.”
(1992) Cleared Hot! The Diary of a Marine Combat Pilot in Vietnam by Col. Bob Stoffey
“Many pilots never made it out of ‘Nam. This one did. Highly decorated Col. Bob Stoffey– a Marine Corps pilot for over twenty-five years, who served multiple tours in Vietnam– has seen and done it all. Cleared Hot! is his story– a fast-paced, high-casualty flight into heart-stopping danger.
Full of vivid detail, this combat diary uncovers the real heroes of the Vietnam War, the behind-the-scenes Marine Corps pilots who helped our boys return home…then went back for more.”
