About
LikeJames Cagney, I'm a real Yankee Doodle Dandy, born in Kingsport,Tennessee on the Fourth of July. Every year since, I've enjoyed thefireworks displays all over the United States that take place on mybirthday. As the picture shows, my major pursuit in life, other thanadding letters after my name, including B.S., M.S. and Ph.D., seemsto be the ongoing quest for the always elusive "just-right"classic car which currently is the restoration of a 1966 JaguarE-Type coupe, but in the past has ranged from a 1941 Cadillac to a1961 Ferrari. Over the years, I've worked at a great variety of jobsranging from bus boy to university professor at Emory University'sOxford College, Southern Arkansas University and James MadisonUniversity. I've also worked as a motel clerk, exploration geologist,photographer, door-to-door salesman, newspaper columnist, landsurveyor, civil engineer, truck driver and meteorologist. Mywritings, including science articles, adventure articles, cararticles and short fiction, have appeared in such varied formats asprofessional science journals, newspapers, literary journals andhistory journals. I've completed two other novels, Last Lion ofSparta and BloodScourge, both to be availablelater this year. Certainly my greatest accomplishment,however, was marrying Elizabeth Hill in 1971. We live in the SouthCarolina foothills of the southern Appalachian Mountains have threesons, Gene D. III, an attorney in the Washington DC area, John Peter,Director of Marketing at a chain of retirements homes in Virginia andWilliam B., an information technology specialist on active duty inthe U.S. Navy.
Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness
Description
<p><b>The absorbing, definitive account of CrossFit's origins, its explosive grassroots growth, and its emergence as a global phenomenon.</b><br /> <br />One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, <i>Learning to Breathe Fire </i>combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. Herz explains the science of maximum effort, why the modern gym fails an obese society, and the psychic rewards of ending up on the floor feeling as though you're about to die. <br /> <br />The story traces CrossFit’s rise, from a single underground gym in Santa Cruz to its adoption as the workout of choice for elite special forces, firefighters and cops, to its popularity as the go-to fitness routine for regular Joes and Janes. Especially riveting is Herz’s description of The CrossFit Games, which begin as an informal throw-down on a California ranch and evolve into a televised global proving ground for the fittest men and women on Earth, as well as hundreds of thousands of lesser mortals. <br /> <br />In her portrayal of the sport's star athletes, its passionate coaches and its “chief armorer,” Rogue Fitness, Herz powerfully evokes the uniqueness of a fitness culture that cultivates primal fierceness in average people. And in the shared ordeal of an all-consuming workout, she unearths the ritual intensity that's been with us since humans invented sports, showing us how, on a deep level, we're all tribal hunters and first responders, waiting for the signal to go all-out. </p>
Story Behind The Book
If the first V-2 guided missile that exploded over London on September 8, 1944 had carried an atomic warhead instead of a conventional explosive, a million people might have died instead of three. Historians are still debating about why the Nazi program failed even though they had competent physicists, government support and the early lead in nuclear energy. Asked why he chose to write about the Nazi bomb, author G Dedrick Robinson said, “The Nazis are known for developing miracle weapons. Yet their atomic bomb program, the one weapon that could have won the war for them, completely fizzled. After extensive research trying to understand why, I thought the story had all the makings for an exciting novel.”
Scheduled for a July 1 release by Salvo Press, The Seventh Deception is the first novel to directly explore the German atomic bomb project. Dr. Robinson builds the plot around a provocative new theory explaining why Hitler's nuclear program met with far less success than the programs that put jet aircraft and rockets in the sky well before anyone else.
Under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Warner Heisenberg, the Nazis take the early lead in nuclear research. Berlin physicist and British agent Anton Breker, realizes that he must try to slow their progress by steering Heisenberg down blind alleys. He has to walk a fine line as he works to subvert Nazi research by day, while at night, making love to his best friend's wife. After Heisenberg discovers the most dangerous nuclear secret of the war, Breker faces his greatest challenge, keeping him from revealing it to the Nazi hierarchy.
