The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles--a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father's arrest. Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate--and her own. Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life's bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls "a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles."

Cain's first novel - the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder.

The tension-filled careers of the Mercury Seven, a handful of elite fighter pilots selected as America's first astronauts, is traced in this account of the dreams and nightmares of the early days of the U.S. manned space program. A behind-the-scenes look at the competitive and often arrogant atmosphere of the initiative—including details on the struggles of deciding whether to send chimpanzees or humans to space and the conflicts between NASA engineers and astronauts—is included along with an account of the program's moments of humor, from recurrent "gotcha" training session pranks to the round of drinks that a dubious answer to the question Are you a turtle? could entail. While most of these men eventually made it to space and even the moon, their lives as a part of NASA continued long after. The story of their work with motivational programs such as the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, U.S. Space Camp, and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center is also included.

The complete story of the Saturn V Rocket is presented in this detailed history of each stage of the construction and testing process. From the drawing boards of Boeing, North American Aviation, and the Douglas company, through shipping materials on massive Super Guppy air transports, prototype engine firings, and wind tunnel tests, and finally to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center, every stage of the planning, production, and actual flight of the rocket is meticulously documented. The lives of the first 45 rocket stages built for the Saturn project are charted, including unprecedented information on the dates, times, and performance parameters for each stage, the facilities used in production, rare documentation of the stages that malfunctioned and the engines that exploded along the way. Details on the development of the F1 and J2 rocket engines and recently declassified photographs of the Saturn project are also included.

A tremendous fascination and curiosity with space travel will be instilled in readers of this memoir by a former NASA astronaut. In a vivid recount of several events on board the space shuttles Endeavor and Columbia, the astronaut reflects on his life in space, emphasizing the routine aspects of the experience that earthbound people can relate to and appreciate. While his reflections intend to unravel the essence of living in space, they are also the starting point of a parallel tale that describes the author's perseverance in overcoming life's obstacles and becoming one of the select few to venture beyond the limits of Earth.

The insider's story of the Atlas rocket, America's first intercontinental ballistic missile, is offered in this careful history of the rocket in its roles as both a civilian and a military vehicle. Written by the manager of program control for the Atlas project, this tell-all includes intimate details of the rocket, including its origins as the MX-774 prototype missile, the difficult development and deployment of its nuclear payload, the activation and deactivation of the Atlas rocket as part of the Strategic Air Command squadrons, and a host of previously unpublished pictures. The missile's development as a civilian rocket is also documented, including details on its role in the Project Mercury manned spaceflights and its use today as the high-performance Centaur and Agena rocket stages used for satellite and space probe launches. Appendixes of the Atlas flight history, a detailed key of program events and milestones, and biographies of prominent Atlas managers are also included.

For the audience of Fiona Davis and Lisa Wingate, a vibrant historical debut set in 1946 North Carolina following a young female seamstress who uncovers dangerous truths about the Big Tobacco empire ruling the American South. “Myers brilliantly seduces us with her setting—a North Carolina town of beautiful socialites, opulent dresses, and elegant soirees—before revealing a terrible secret that threatens the entire community. This is a story of courage, of women willing to take a stand in the face of corporate greed, and most definitely a tale for our times.” —Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. When a series of unexpected events thrusts Maddie into the role of lead dressmaker for the town’s most influential women, she scrambles to produce their ornate gowns for the biggest party of the season. But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn’t quite the carefree paradise that it seems: A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems. Although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise. Maddie wants to report what she knows, but in a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive, she doesn’t know who she can trust—and fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds. Shedding light on the hidden history of women’s activism during the post-war period, at its heart, The Tobacco Wives is a deeply human, emotionally satisfying, and dramatic novel about the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth.

Readers will gain the most comprehensive view available on what President Bush's new space vision will do for human exploration of the Solar System-and how nearly everything NASA does will change as a result.

This guide is an everyman's introduction to topics from atomic physics to astronomy, with colorful graphics and understandable text.

This forward-thinking book examines how the exploration of space may eventually transform the global economy.