Reading recommendations:

Undaunted Courage, Meri-wether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, Stephen E. Ambrose.In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact with white men. He and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the Flora and Fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Ambrose has pieced together previously unkown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a colorful and realistic backdrop for the expedition. Lewis saw the North American continent before any other white man. Ambrose describes in detail nature, peoples, weather, landscape, science, everything the expedition encountered along the way, through Lewis' eyes.Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next came Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jeffferson's. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian Girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Qunicy Adams, and many more figures of the turn of the century. This is a book about a hero and a book about national unity. But it is also a tragedy. There is too much more to mention here. It's all spelled out as only Stephen Ambrose can do. What a marvelous writer this man truly is!Unbroken, A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura HillenbraudOn a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardiers, who was struggling to a liferaft and pulling himself aboard. So began on of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.The lieutenants' name was Louis Zamperini. In his boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity: suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body and spirit. Unforgettable!!See you at Rylander.Reading recommendations:

Undaunted Courage, Meri-wether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, Stephen E. Ambrose.In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact with white men. He and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the Flora and Fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Ambrose has pieced together previously unkown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a colorful and realistic backdrop for the expedition. Lewis saw the North American continent before any other white man. Ambrose describes in detail nature, peoples, weather, landscape, science, everything the expedition encountered along the way, through Lewis' eyes.Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next came Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jeffferson's. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian Girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Qunicy Adams, and many more figures of the turn of the century. This is a book about a hero and a book about national unity. But it is also a tragedy. There is too much more to mention here. It's all spelled out as only Stephen Ambrose can do. What a marvelous writer this man truly is!Unbroken, A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura HillenbraudOn a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardiers, who was struggling to a liferaft and pulling himself aboard. So began on of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.The lieutenants' name was Louis Zamperini. In his boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity: suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body and spirit. Unforgettable!!See you at Rylander.