Tag Archives: Zenith Press

Culture

Aviation Books From Quarto Include Original SR-71 Pilot Handbook

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It’s late September as I write this and with winter slowly creeping in (Sorry but true!) and holiday shopping season around the corner, I would like to tell you all about some amazing books to add to your shopping list and help pass the cold months. If you are an aviation lover, you are in for a very special treat courtesy of Quarto Publishing.

The Blackbird first flew in Dec 1964!

They took the ORIGINAL flight manual and republished it… all 1,040 pages and 8 pounds!!!! The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was a long-range, Mach 3 reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed’s top-secret Skunk Works. One of the first aircraft designed to have a low radar signature, the SR-71 could map 100,000 square miles from an altitude of 80,000 feet. Operational from 1964 to 1998, it is still the fastest jet-powered aircraft – a Blackbird once completed a Los Angeles-to-Washington, D.C. flight in 64 minutes. Naturally, reigning in all that technology and performance required some know-how on the parts of the pilots and ground crews
spyplanes
For as long as there has been sustained heavier-than-air human flight, airplanes have been used to gather information about our adversaries. Less than a decade after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, Italian pilots were keeping tabs on Turkish foes in Libya. Today, aircraft with specialized designs and sensory equipment still cruise the skies, spying out secrets in the never-ending quest for an upper hand.
 skunkworks
Hatched in June 1943 after a special request of the US Army Air Forces to develop a turbojet-powered fighter to counter growing German threats, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has gone on to develop remarkable aeronautical and space technologies, including stealth. Some have made it into production, while others never quite made it off drafting boards and computer screens, but proved fascinating nonetheless.
fighter killer planes ww2

There’s no shortage of fantastic archival aviation photography from World War II. But photos from the period fall short in three major categories: the vast majority are black and white, most were composed under duress, and very few capture moments that have since entered the written record of aerial conflict.

Award-winning artist Jim Laurier rectifies the situation in this stunning, large-format, hardcover book celebrating World War II’s top fighter aircraft.

arado ar234
For the Silo, Nichole Schiele.

Supplemental-  Clint Eastwood’s under-rated movie “Firefox”

Comics

WW2 Smartphone Graphic Novel Katusha

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KATUSHA VOLUME ONE: EDGE OF DARKNESS, the first of a three volume graphic novel series by historical graphic novelist Wayne Vansant, is now available exclusively in digital format from digital publishing imprint Grand Design Communications.

The painting Kateryna by the Ukrainian poet and painter Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861)influenced Katusha. Kateryna tells the story of a Ukrainian country girl who is seduced and abandoned by a Russian cavalry officer.

KATUSHA is a coming-of-age story set in the Eastern Front of World War II, following the life of a Ukrainian farm girl Ekaterina Tymoshenko, nicknamed Katusha, starting with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941. The three-volume graphic novel, which when finished will total 540 pages, follows her journey from farm girl to partisan fighter to tank commander in the Red Army, along the way participating in the Battles of Stalingrad and Berlin, among others.

During the second world war, hundreds of thousands of Soviet women served in the Red Army as pilots, snipers, tank drivers and other essential roles. Although KATUSHA is a work of fiction, Vansant based his story on interviews he conducted with living veterans in Ukraine and extensive research. He will return for another trip this fall, to conduct more interviews and do research on locations.

Lviv, Ukraine, 26 October 2010 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is joined by Ukrainian officials as he pays tribute to Ukrainian poet, artist, and humanist Taras Shevchenko.

KATUSHA VOLUME ONE: EDGE OF DARKNESS, the first of three volumes, is out now exclusively in digital format for iPhone, iPad, Android, and in-browser reading. It is available in two formats – as six separate chapters priced at $.99usd each and as a single one hundred eighty page edition priced at $4.99usd, and can be purchased through iVerse’s ComicsPlus app and from Grand Design’s electronic storefront on iVerse’s website.

A native of Marbleton, Georgia, writer/artist Wayne Vansant has created many historical graphic novels – both fiction and non-fiction – in a career spanning more than twenty five years. His non-fiction graphic novel about the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II, NORMANDY, were be published in September by Zenith Press.

His recent collaboration with writer Dwight Jon Zimmerman, THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL (2012), a graphic novel about Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the end of slavery in America was published by Hill and Wang, and Vansant was the primary artist for Marvel’s The ‘Nam for more than five years.

His other non-fiction graphic novels on military history include DAYS OF DARKNESS, ANTIETAM: THE FIERY TRIAL (with the United States National Park Service), BLOCKADE: THE CIVIL WAR AT SEA, and THE VIETNAM WAR: A GRAPHIC HISTORY.