Showing results for "Robert Wright" in History

At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.

Robert Schapiro always wanted to fly. Challenging anti-Semitic bullying, mockery, and fierce rivalry, he realised his dream by earning his wings in the South African Air Force and going on to command C-47 Dakotas in the Border War. He joined South African Airways (SAA) in 1979, soon learning it was a time when SAA crews were dominated by the "Royal Family" - captains who thought themselves above the rules and who spent time overseas on drinking binges or coaxing air hostesses to be their "airline wives".

In 1969 the US Air Force issued a statement that read‚ "No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security." This statement has been proven untrue by the testimony of many military officers and airmen and documentation of incidents involving UFOs and nuclear weapons, testimonies of which the US Air Force was fully aware. UAPs and the Nuclear Puzzle details many of these testimonies, some for the first time.

Shareholder activist Wilma Soss rocketed to fame in the 1950s fighting for the rights of the individual investor. But over the years, her legacy was almost forgotten. Based on archival documents, this is the true story of how a disparate group of activist investors—from a PR star to a Holocaust survivor--found each other and became the advocates Fortune 500 management loved to hate.

In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was—and is—a world-class lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor's shutdown, and even attempts to close the entire laboratory. A quarter century later, the episode reveals the dynamics of today's controversies in which fears and the dismissal of science disrupt serious discussion and research of vital issues.

Cockpit chaos and classroom camaraderie fuel the entropic adventures of Second Lieutenant Ray Wright and his fellow classmates of UPT Class 88-07 at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi. Though competing against one another for the flying assignments of their dreams, like the fearsome F-15 and F-16 fighters, a good mission sometimes takes a backseat to a good party or punch line in this classroom of cut-ups. The high stakes, however, loom over Lt. Wright. In a program where one out of three students fails, not everybody who starts UPT will finish it.