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To Be a Rose
Price range: $3.99 through $23.99Ed is a retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel working for a defense contractor. He has been hired as a Senior Logistics Expert to work with the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense as an advisor and mentor to two senior Afghan officers.
Ed first appears telling an Army Combat Medic he can’t breathe. He is transferred to Camp Phoenix just outside of Kabul for further treatment. Over the next twelve hours, he is treated by a “tag team” of nurses and doctors. During this time he remembers the sights, smells and sounds of Afghanistan and his journey there.
Mr. Mason uses vivid imagery and character portrayals to tell his story from his arrival in Dubai up to the beginning of his eight week dream. Ed describes his day-to-day routine at Camp Eggers, his fellow officers, his family and the dedicated medical teams he encountered on his journey. Ed’s story is straightforward, powerful, yet humorous account of his experiences in Afghanistan and how his battle for survival changes his life forever. -
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To Then and Back Again: A Memoir Part One A Collection of Uh-Oh’s, No No’s and A Few OMG’S
Price range: $3.99 through $19.99To Then And Back Again is a memoir written in two parts. It’s a book for those who enjoy the trials and tribulations of real-life people and feel they can or would like to relate to those whom they are reading about. It’s a memoir about only those richest, most interesting details concerning my life…or so I would like to think. It was written to convey those sometimes simple, sometimes complex, but many times emotionally charged experiences I’ve had during my life. Whether these emotions were elicited by the harsh realities of adversity that I, like many, have faced and overcome, or by the personal triumphs achieved through perseverance, and at times, through sheer willpower alone is for the reader to decide. I will, however, try to express them in such a manner as to allow the readers the chance to decide for themselves. We will embark on a journey to then and back again; an odyssey that will encompass a multitude of adventures that are at times disturbing and chaotic, and at other times fascinating and humorous. These adventures will range from overcoming desperation and loneliness as a result of a hidden identity, to the anguish of a best friend and his suicide that served absolutely no purpose nor had any meaning; a suicide that gained nothing for anyone…especially himself. From an insidious monster’s theft of a child’s innocence to things that just happen; catching you unaware, then kicks you right square in your pearly whites. The journey will certainly run the gamut of human experiences and emotions, and I will share my life with the reader if they wish to take the ride. And of which I’m also certain, if I do it suitably, then they will vicariously become the reader’s adventures as well. The first part is about my life from the time I was about eight years old, when our family home was destroyed by fire to when I was just out of high school and first went out to live on my own. The second part will be about my life from when I was about twenty until I was thirty something. It will begin when my dad and I built my first home until I finally moved from my hometown to go off to medical school.
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Unusual Attitudes: Flight Instructor Memoirs
Price range: $3.99 through $26.99Captain Ed (Edwin D. Armbruster) lived a fascinating life as he flew thousands of hours over the jungles of Panama and the Caribbean in single engine planes. Over seven hundred students called him their instructor as he piloted them from Atlantic to Pacific over and along the Panama Canal, through Panama, Central and South America. Beginning with the halcyon days of Canal Zone life and navigating more troubled times as the drug wars escalated, adventure calls on every page.
As exciting and spell-binding as the tropical background is beautiful, “Captain Ed” regales and inspires with his stories of crashes and near-misses, student antics, hair-raising escapes and unusual friendships, all as the glory days of the Panama Canal slowly faded into memory.
For those who fly and those who long to fly — this book soars with adventure. -
Victims of Ineptitude: An Insider’s Account of Injustice within the World Health Organization
Price range: $3.99 through $14.99For years, critics have demanded reform of the World Health Organization. Its management structure in particular is said to be archaic, its staff deeply demoralised. But, since WHO like other UN bodies, is accountable to no-one but itself, it dodders along unchanged. It is left to the ground staff of International Civil Servants to grapple with the real difficulties the ivory-tower academics pinpoint in long winded reports. The work of these International Civil Servants in distant lands among foreign cultures is often hazardous and lonely, and requires good management by those at the centre if it is to succeed. Instead, as this story shows, there is often lack of support and callous disregard which matters deeply because, if staff are as a result, unable to meet the extremely difficult challenges they face, no blast of grand talk at a conference, no high flying plan on plush paper, will save millions of dollars donated by the developed world from sinking like water into the sand. The individual human story related here reveals weaknesses in this great Organization which, multiplied over the region, help to explain why Africa remains the most disease-ridden continent on earth.