In November 1963, Paul Landis was a witness to history. But despite seeing the fatal shot from 20 feet away and being at President John F. Kennedy's side at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Landis was never called on by the Warren Commission to tell his story of the president's assassination. Sixty years later, the former Secret Service agent is telling his story of safeguarding the Kennedy family and the explosive moment in Dallas that changed the course of history-and his life. In The Final Witness (Chicago Review Press, October 10, 2023), Landis shares his role in of one of American history's most shocking events, and the one action that alters our understanding of one of the most notorious murders of the 20th Century. Special Agent Paul Landis was stationed in the car directly behind the president's in Dealey Plaza. He was inside Trauma Room #1 as the president was pronounced dead. He was on Air Force One with the president's casket on the flight back to Washington D.C.-an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office. What he saw indelibly imprinted on his psyche. By mid-1964, the nightmares from Dallas remained, and he resigned. It wasn't until the fiftieth anniversary that he began to talk about it and read his first books about the assassination, realizing that they had the story wrong. He has kept his recollections private until now, including details surrounding a key piece of evidence that may permanently change our understanding of this critical moment of U.S. history.

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Huntley was singing and impersonating Elvis by the time he was 4 but never took himself seriously. When Huntley was 14, while walking home from school, a friend overheard him sing and assured him he was great. From that day forward, Huntley wanted to pursue music. After two years of college, he moved to Nashville but didn't find the success he had hoped for. After falling out of love with the music grind, he moved back home to Virginia. In 2016, Huntley welcomed his daughter and in 2021 welcomed his son. He never had a relationship with his own father, which motivated him to be very involved in his kids' lives. Since 2022, Huntley has found success as a booking agent for musicians. Now that music is coming back into his life, he's been a full-time musician gigging five times a week all over Virginia. Huntley is ready to make music a priority in his life after being a dad first.

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Mara grew up in a close-knit Italian family and was 9 when she performed for the first time, singing "The Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston at a local competition. When she won, everything clicked and she started performing at charity benefits and sports events. Now, Mara gigs at local bars and restaurants at the Jersey Shore and her entire family comes to watch. Mara's mom, Linda, was diagnosed with an early stage of breast cancer and is the one who holds the family together, doing everything she can to be present while facing surgery, radiation and/or chemo. Linda wants to get through her breast cancer journey quickly and not miss any of Mara's journey.

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Ruby is one of 68 people who live in a tiny town in Missouri. At just 4, Ruby and her parents survived a horrific tornado when that nearly killed her parents. From that day on, Ruby struggled to be apart from them and she opted for homeschool to stay close. At 9, she discovered her love of country music when she overheard her dad listening to Guy Clark's "Dublin Blues." Determined to learn the song, she had it memorized the next day. Her first competition was put on by St. Louis Cardinals player Adam Wainwright. She came in third place and has been hooked on a music career ever since. Ruby is an accomplished aspiring country star and has performed with Vince Gill, the Time Jumpers, Mickey Gilley and Johnny Lee as well as doing pre-shows for Clint Black and Tracy Lawrence. She also had the chance to sing on stage at a Lorrie Morgan concert.

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When Ian Fritz joined the Air Force at eighteen, he did so out of necessity. He hadn't been accepted into college thanks to an indifferent high school career. He'd too often slept through his classes as he worked long hours at a Chinese restaurant to help pay the bills for his trailer-dwelling family in Lake City, Florida. But the Air Force recognizes his potential and sends him to the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to learn Dari and Pashto, the main languages of Afghanistan. By 2011, Fritz was an airborne cryptologic linguist and one of only a tiny number of people in the world trained to do this job on low-flying gunships. He monitors communications on the ground and determines in real time which Afghans are Taliban and which are innocent civilians. This eavesdropping is critical to supporting Special Forces units on the ground, but there is no training to counter the emotional complexity that develops as you listen to people's most intimate conversations. Over the course of two tours, Fritz listens to the Taliban for hundreds of hours, all over the country night and day, in moments of peace and in the middle of battle. What he hears teaches him about the people of Afghanistan-Taliban and otherwise-the war, and himself. Fritz's fluency is his greatest asset to the military, yet it becomes the greatest liability to his own commitment to the cause. Both proud of his service and in despair that he is instrumental in destroying the voices that he hears, What the Taliban Told Me is a brilliant, intimate coming-of-age memoir and a reckoning with our twenty years of war in Afghanistan.

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"DON'T BE A TURKEY PERSON" "We had to coach basic fundamentals like character. But half the team was still engaged in the same destructive behavior that got them to 4-95. So I went to my player Bo Bo, asking him why these kids weren't buying into the important stuff. Bobo said, 'Coach, they're trying to figure out if you're a Turkey Person or not.' And I said, 'Bo Bo, what the hell is a Turkey Person?' He's like, "Coach, every Thanksgiving, people give us turkeys and we take them because we got none. But then they leave and we never see them again. And it kind of makes you wonder if they're doing that because they really care about us or if they're doing that to make themselves feel good. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, Coach, what the hell are you really doing here, man?' And what a Turkey Person is, is a fraud. And I can say that to you, because I was one. An Army of Normal Folks is launching a campaign called "Don't Be A Turkey Person" to challenge all of us this Thanksgiving, and it isn't about not eating turkey. Not long after the Turkey Person story and the front page of the newspaper had a picture of me, my son said, 'Hey Dad, what are your players' names?' An eight year old boy shocked me. He revealed that I'd been telling everybody everything I was doing, but people didn't even know the kids' names who were actually doing the work. I reversed course immediately and gave them credit. And this crazy thing happened, the kids started buying in. We need to create An Army of Normal Folks, not Turkey Persons, who fill areas of need, for the right reasons. And if we did that, we literally can change this country. And that's a lesson that was taught to me by a 17-year-old kid." Watch the coach's YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-bKvnSKmB8

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Alexa grew up in a musical family as her Dad's passion for collecting vintage guitars inspired Alexa's love for acoustic stringed instruments, which led to her playing guitar and octave mandolin. Alexa's deep love for the Americana music scene came when she saw the Wailin' Jennys perform at a festival when she was 17. Life came full circle when a member of that band sang harmonies on Alexa's debut EP in 2018. A few years later, Alexa began couch surfing and really wanted to experience life in a mobile home/touring vehicle. A friend offered her his loaded-out van and Alexa spent the following months living out of it and traveling wherever her next gig would take her. She now lives in Colorado after the cold winter months had her saying goodbye to van life. She writes, gigs and teaches voice lessons.

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It seemed like life had finally come together for Dr. Dhaval Desai and his wife – both were doctors, with jobs they found fulfilling, and they just welcomed a new son into the world. Then the virus hit, and everything turned upside down.

Dr. Dhaval Desai gives an honest and thought-provoking account of his work, life, and state of mind in the new book, BURNING OUT ON THE COVID FRONT LINES: Fatherhood, Race, and Perseverance in the Pandemic (McFarland & Company, November 7th, 2023). Dr. Desai at first relates his initial excitement at having a central role in a global pandemic, but that turned out to be short lived. We all know the issues that made a tough situation even tougher – lack of protective gear, hospital procedures weren’t protecting health workers, Covid patients didn’t seem to take it seriously, and the race disparities for Hispanic, black, or other minorities who had more difficult times with COVID-19 and getting treated.

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"The most bracingly honest, refreshing account of the Afghan war" (Sebastian Junger, New York Times? bestselling author) from a Marine Corps Combat Cameraman and director of the acclaimed documentary Combat Obscura. At just eighteen years old, Miles Lagoze joined the Marine Corps a decade after the war began and found himself surrounded by people not unlike those he'd left behind at home-aimless youth searching for stability, community, and economic security. Deployed to Afghanistan as a Combat Cameraman-an active-duty videographer and photographer-Lagoze produced slick images of glory and heroism for public consumption. But his government-approved footage concealed a grim reality. Here, Lagoze pulls back the curtain and illustrates the grisly truth of the longest war in American history. As these young men and women were deployed to an unfamiliar country half a world away-history's "graveyard of empires"-they carried the scars of the fractured homeland that sent them. Lagoze shows us Marines straddling the edge of chaos. We see forces desensitized to gore and suffering by the darkest reaches of the internet, unsure of their places in an unraveling world and set further adrift by the uncertain mission to which they had been assigned abroad. Whistles from the Graveyard: My Time Behind the Camera on War, Rage, and Restless Youth in Afghanistan shows the parts of the Afghanistan War we were never meant to see-Afghan locals and American infantry drawn together by their fears of the ghostly, ever-present terror of the Taliban; moments of dark resignation as the devastating toll of years in war's crossfire reveals itself between bouts of adrenaline-laced violence; and nights of reckless, drug-fueled abandon to dull the pain. In full, vivid color, Miles Lagoze shows us an oft-overlooked generation of young Americans we cast out into the desert, steeped in nihilism, and shipped back home with firsthand training in extremism, misanthropy, and insurrection.

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Living on the beautiful island of Oahu, Kaylee was born and raised in Ewabeach. The oldest of four, Kaylee's younger sisters look up to her for her musical and athletic abilities. Kaylee wrestled for her varsity team this past year and won several matches, including a tournament. Kaylee also has a softer side, and that's where she loves to incorporate music. She's performed for charity events, competitions and all-over social media. Known for her whistle notes, one of Kaylee's Instagram videos went viral of her singing a Mariah Carey song. As a recent high school grad, Kaylee wants to pursue music full-time and share her talent with the world. Motivated by not only her parents and siblings, Kaylee had a lot of support from her great-grandfather before he passed away. She knows he's looking down on her and hopes to make him proud.

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