David A. Clary

Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution

Adopted Son

They were unlikely comrades-in-arms. One was a self-taught, middle-aged Virginia planter in charge of a ragtag army of revolutionaries, the other a rich, glory-seeking teenage French aristocrat. But the childless Washington and the orphaned Lafayette forged a bond between them as strong as any between father and son. It was an unbreakable trust that saw them through betrayals, shifting political alliances, and the trials of war. Lafayette came to America a rebellious youth whose defiance of his king made him a celebrity in France. His money and connections attracted the favor of the Continental Congress, which advised Washington to keep the exuberant Marquis from getting himself killed. But when the boy-general was wounded in his first battle, he became a hero of two countries. As the war ground on, Washington found in his young charge the makings of a courageous and talented commander whose loyalty, generosity, and eagerness to please his Commander in Chief made him one of the war’s most effective and inspired generals. Lafayette’s hounding of Cornwallis’s army was the perfect demonstration of Washington’s unconventional “bush-fighting” tactics, and led to the British surrender at Yorktown. Their friendship continued throughout their lives. Lafayette inspired widespread French support for a struggling young America and personally influenced Washington’s antislavery views. Washington’s enduring example as general and statesman guided Lafayette during France’s own revolution years later. Using personal letters and other key historical documents, Adopted Son offers a rare glimpse of the American Revolution through the friendship between Washington and Lafayette. It offers dramatic accounts of battles and intimate portraits of such major figures as Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold, and Benjamin Franklin. The result is a remarkable, little-known epic of friendship, revolution, and the birth of a nation.

Joseph W. A. Whitehorne

The Inspectors General of the United States Army, 1777-1903

More famous in his day than Einstein or Edison, the troubled, solitary genius Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945) was the American father of rocketry and space flight, launching the world's first liquid-fuel rockets and the first powered vehicles to break the sound barrier. Supported by Charles Lindbergh and Harry Guggenheim, through fiery, often explosive, experiments at Roswell, New Mexico, he invented the methods that carried men to the moon. Today, no rocket or jet plane can fly without using his inventions. Yet he is the "forgotten man" of the space age. His own government ignored his rocketry until the Germans demonstrated its principles in the V-2 missiles of World War II. The American government usurped his 214 patents, while suppressing his contributions in the name of national security, until it was forced to pay one million dollars for patent infringement. Goddard became famous again, monuments and medals raining upon his memory. But his renewed fame soon faded, and Goddard's pivotal role in launching the Space Age has been largely forgotten.

Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age

Rocket Man

A study of the establishment of inspection practices in the United States Army told chronologically, in large part through the experiences of officers assigned to the inspection service. The record of the inspectorate illustrates those daily concerns that influenced the institutional development of the Inspector General Corps as a whole.

Now in paperback, the life and legacy of the much-overlooked yet highly influential Robert Goddard -- the brilliant, eccentric, and controversial pioneer of the space age. More famous in his day than Einstein or Edison, the troubled, solitary genius Robert H. Goddard was the American father of rocketry and space flight, launching the world's first liquid-fuel rockets and the first powered vehicles to break the sound barrier. Supported by Charles Lindbergh and Harry Guggenheim, he devised the methods that carried men to the moon. Today, no rocket or jet plane can fly without his inventions. Yet Goddard is the "forgotten man" of the Space Age. After the Germans launched the V-2 missiles of World War II, the American government usurped his 214 patents and suppressed his contributions in the name of national security, until it was forced to pay one million dollars for patent infringement. Goddard became famous again; monuments and medals raining upon his memory. But his renewed fame soon faded, and Goddard's pivotal role in launching the Space Age has been largely forgotten -- until now.

Renowned historian David A. Clary studies George Washington’s early military career as a young colonel during the French and Indian War, and how those campaigns influenced his leadership and strategy as a general during the Revolutionary War and as the first president of the newly formed United States of America. The searing, formative military adventures of the inexperienced boy colonel of the French and Indian War who grew up to become one of the great soldier-statesmen of his age. George Washington wasn’t born a military leader. He became one the hard way—through trial and error and perseverance at a very early age and in the most trying circumstances imaginable. From the massacre of a French diplomatic party by soldiers under his command (thereby starting a world war), to his surrendering of Fort Necessity to the French, to his leading a harrowing retreat of British troops under fire, we see Washington learn the lessons of command. George Washington’s First War is a story told in vivid language, combining dramatic depictions of battle with the anxieties and frustrations of an adolescent who’s not yet a great man. Readers learn of harrowing ordeals in the wilderness, the hitherto little explored role played by the Indian nations whose continent this was, and the epic clash of empires that all combined to turn the young Washington into the great commander and president of his age.

His Early Military Adventures

George Washington's First War

The flying saucer has been the most vivid and persistent image in American life of the last half century. It has also generated more controversy and rancor than anything else that might be characterized as a fantasy. It is malleable, suiting a wide variety of beliefs and outlooks, touching nearly every public concern. It arrived as a mysterious threat from above, a metaphor for The Bomb. It transformed swiftly into a hope from above, promising to save us from ourselves. Renamed UFO, it became a symbol for those who distrusted the government. Along its way through the postwar skies, it acquired a cargo that included every species of hoax, craziness, lunacy, and even sexual fantasy, along with a fair amount of scientific and political baggage. The flying saucer myth says much about how Americans react to the unexpected. Before and After Roswell: The Flying Saucer in America, 1947-1999 places the flying saucer idea in the context of history, politics, entertainment, and science to arrive at an explanation of what it is all about and how it got that way. Because the Roswell incident--the story that a flying saucer crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and that the government has hidden the truth about it ever since--has dominated the subject recently, the book is anchored around that particular story while demonstrating that the flying saucer did exist before and after Roswell. It corrects some misconceptions, including one that holds that because a majority of people say they believe in UFOs, they therefore believe in a conspiracy to cover up the truth about them. After detailing what actually happened in Roswell in 1947, the book takes up the birth of the flying saucer earlier that year, underscoring the fact that the name originally denoted its movement, not its shape. The text then examines the Air Forces and CIAs responses to the phenomenon, and the rise of competing bands of ufologists, true believers and skeptics, to dominate debate over it. The book also addresses Cold War contributions to the UFO issue, and the role of Hollywood in providing the images that defined it. Along the way it describes the crashed-saucer tradition, the contactees, abductions, men in black, the Bermuda Triangle, ancient astronauts, cattle mutilations, the little gray alien, SETIs Drake Equation, sex and the flying saucer, and the rise of a new ufology emanating from the conspiracy culture growing out of the Kennedy assassination mythology and the Watergate scandal. Part Two of Before and After Roswell begins with the invention of the incident in 1980, then traces the history of the flying saucer idea to the end of the century. Important here are the submersion of the saucer into the larger anti-government conspiracy tradition of that period, and the increasing domination of the subject by television, including Area 51, a myth invented on a TV show, and the combined influence of reality-based cable documentaries and the amazingly popular series The X-Files. Also addressed are such things as crop circles, the MAJIC hoax, the face on Mars, UFO conspiracy fiction, and the explosion of the abduction belief. A chapter on The Battle of Roswell traces the evolution of that controversy through a succession of books by ufologists; in the end it broke down into disputed orthodoxies and feuds over who had the real crash site to charge admission to. When boosters tried to turn Roswell into a tourist attraction, their quarrels and mercenary outlook alienated the town and made the annual UFO Encounter a flop. The book concludes that the flying saucer is not a thing, but an idea, and one that will overcome the burden of

David A. Clary

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