Bates Alumni Author

The seed for this book was planted in 2011 when the author gave a talk at a veterans' home on his first book―Shot Down Over Italy―about a B-25 crew. One of the veterans, John Cooney, sought him out to tell him that he too went down in a plane over Italy during World War II, but with a B-24 crew. Over the next three years, they kept in touch and when John passed away in 2014 someone in his family called the author his biographer.

While this book began with war stories about John, the crew he served with, and other crews of their bomb group, it grew to encompass much more when the author learned that John's father served in World War I. His father served with the medical support forces which cared for casualties of war while John served with the fighting air forces many of whom became casualties of war.

The book analyzes two world wars-how they were started, mobilized, fought, supported, ended, and more. It explains the role of the United States in both wars with a focus on its medical support in World War I, which cared for the sick and wounded, and its airpower in World War II, which bombed factories that made weapons, oil fields that fueled them, facilities that stored them, and the transportation networks that brought them to the battlefront.

The book shows that powerful leaders start wars, but citizens fight them and experience the horror. It describes the process of changing from a peacetime economy producing goods and services that help people to a wartime economy producing goods and services that harm people. War is hell and this book pays tribute to those who experienced this hell while doing their duty as citizens.

Because countries now have nuclear weapons which could elevate horror to an unfathomable level, this book also shows why we need to keep powerful leaders in check by giving the citizens who fight wars the freedom to govern themselves and wield more power than a powerful few who could start another world war.

KK Rhinehart finds an unfamiliar iPhone in her husband's car, and what she discovers on it ends her 25-year marriage. At the age of 55, and already feeling wrecked physically and mentally by menopause, she's ready to give up. Desperate to hide, she retreats to her family's Cape Cod summer beach house in the off-season.

But KK's two siblings and her two closest friends refuse to let her waste away on the couch. Their over-the-top support ranges from makeovers to hot yoga. Then, she meets bartender Jay. With beautiful eyes and big hands, KK calls the much younger man "Surfer Guy" and can barely string a sentence together around him, but what she thinks is a one-sided, silly crush turns into intense interest from Jay.

KK might be able to find her joy again, but before that happens, she must navigate viral TikTok videos, a national debate on reverse age-gap dating, heartbreaking loss, and a whole lot of kitchen dancing. In this hilarious, inspirational take on love with a younger man, mid-life changes have never been this much fun.

It has been said that history is written by the victors, but that is no criterion for its truth! Liberate Hawai'i! boldly challenges the prevailing narrative that the country of Hawai'i was "annexed" in 1898, converted to a "territory" until 1959, and then converted once again to a "state" of the United States. Recent important research by Hawaiian scholars concludes decisively that what was transferred in

1898 was not the sovereignty of Hawai'i, but merely control.

In the 1800s, Hawai'i was recognized world wide as an independent country, including by the United States, and like other countries had widespread embassies and consulates, as well as its own currency and obviously a well defined island land base. The 1893 coup against the reigning Queen Lili'uokalani was a hostile act by a small group of Caucasian residents, with the complicity of minister (ambassador) John Stevens of the United States who directed the landing of 160 armed men from the USS Boston to menace the queen. Faced with this formidable force and impending war with the USA, the queen, wishing to avoid bloodshed, temporarily and conditionally yielded her authority to the USA, until the matter could be reviewed in Washington.

The incoming president in 1893, Grover Cleveland, upon learning of what had transpired, halted the rush to annexation, the motive of the coup, and called the coup for what it was: "an act of war." A stalemate ensued for the duration of his term. William McKinley took office in early 1897 and proceeded to re-submit the treaty of annexation that had been pulled by Cleveland. However, it failed to gain the requisite 2/3 majority in the Senate. Thus there is no

(valid) "treaty of annexation." What then occurred was the attempt to disguise a "Joint Resolution of Congress," as a "treaty," violating the Constitution and failing to recognize that no legislative body of one country can unilaterally "annex" a foreign country, even with the assistance of a puppet government, particularly when there is vehement objection by the residents of the country allegedly being annexed!

Thus, the very foundation of the claim to have acquired the sovereignty of Hawai'i and subsequent claim of "statehood" cannot stand. It is this awareness that has generated in Hawai'i today a broad and deed determination to regain full the nationhood status of the 1800s. International diplomatic efforts in that regard continue.