This study analyzes the sociocultural factors that affect Saudi students in the U.S. as they seek information and explores to what extent these factors impact their everyday life information seeking (ELIS) behavior and their information technology behavior (ITB). The factors in this study illustrate the unique sociocultural values that distinguish Saudi students from other international student groups: gender segregation, emphasis on religion, social support, and utilization of the consultation concept. After collecting data from an online survey, the data from linear regression analyses revealed that only one culture factor (the language barrier) showed a significant impact on Saudi student ELIS in the U.S., while the other factors were not statistically significant. Also, the findings indicated that perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) were statistically significant to the ELIS of Saudi students. Furthermore, the study showed that after academic information, food and drink, entertainment, and health were the top student needs, the top ranking sources for everyday life seeking information were social media and the Internet. The findings of the study help to shed light on a sizable user group. As the fourth largest group of international students in the U.S., Saudi students have been underrepresented in research. …

My Darling Boys is the story of a New Mexico farm family whose three sons were sent to fight in World War II. All flew combat aircraft in the Army Air Forces. In 1973 one of the boys, Oscar Allison, a B-24 top turret gunner and flight engineer, wrote a memoir of his World War II experiences. On a mission to Regensburg, Germany, his bomber, ravaged by German fighters, was shot down. He was captured and spent fifteen months in German stalag prisons. His memoir, the core of this unique book, details his training, combat, and prisoner-of-war experience in a truthful, introspective, and compelling manner. Fred H. Allison, the author and Oscar’s nephew, gained access to family letters that supplement Oscar’s story and bring to light the experiences of Oscar’s brothers. Harold Allison, the author’s father, was sidelined from combat as a bomber copilot due to a health condition. The letters also tell of the brother who did not come home, Wiley Grizzle Jr., a P-51 fighter pilot. Wiley’s last mission brought his squadron of Mustangs into a pitched battle with German fighters bound for the front to attack American troops. The letters also introduce the boys’ family, who fought …

This case profiles the Hartford Symphony Orchestra (HSO), which serves residents in the state of Connecticut and southern Massachusetts and represents one of the largest orchestras in New England. Several unique elements of its organizational structure are revealed, before focusing on a set of contract negotiations that hinge on its “core” of 33 members.

Consists of notes to be used when teaching the case study entitled At the Core: Contract Negotiations at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

This case examines the plans developed by the administration of the New World Symphony for its new home, in particular the operating cost projections for using the facility once it was built.

Consists of notes to be used when teaching the case study entitled Building on Trust at the New World Symphony.

Groupmuse provides musical events for young audiences in intimate listening environments. Prompted by an external study of the organization, the group’s CEO is considering rolling out Groupmuse into the Los Angeles market. Without contacts and staff in Los Angeles however, the CEO is concerned that expansion into this market would mean losing a grip on the tightly managed nature of Groupmuse. This case explores the philosophy behind Groupmuse and the rationale to expand into new markets.

Consists of notes to use when teaching the case study entitled My House is Your House: Groupmuse’s Revival of Chamber Music.

The case study details the early success of The Industry, free from the shackles of a permanent space, and unfolds the three-year strategic plan to guide the enterprise. Amid plans for continued operations, the executive director of The Industry is presented with the opportunity to hold a residency at a new museum in Los Angeles, one very much in line with the opera company’s contemporary cachet. This study outlines the prospects of the proposed museum residency, but questions at the board level remain about how an organization that has grown up without a home base for productions should react to the chance to forge a relationship with an institution that could bolster—or hinder—its success.

Consists of notes to be used when teaching the case study entitled No Place Like Home: The Industry at a Crossroads.

This case study profiles a pair of contrasting artist residency agreements in the portfolio of a single musical arts organization—the contemporary chamber music sextet Eighth Blackbird. It examines the nature and outcomes of the residencies and assess the merits of the organization’s arrangements with their hosts.

Consists of notes to be used when teaching the case study entitled Taking up residence with Eighth Blackbird.

The eight stories of speculative fiction in There Is Only Us explore themes of loneliness, connectedness, and selfhood. Each one is an act of intimacy—an altered world shown through the lens of a close relationship. Brothers, sisters, lovers, mothers, and daughters come together in myriad constellations, often so that one character can make a body-altering choice of extreme proportions. In a variety of forms—from a satirical retelling of Noah’s Ark to a sister drama revolving around naked mole rats—There Is Only Us presents a series of escalating scenarios, intimate and yet absurd, that ask, how much can you change and still be you? Ballering’s stories bring to speculative fiction a new lightness and absurdity and a commitment to contemporary experiences of loneliness, especially among Millennials: loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic, ecological loneliness (the sense that, by the end of our lives, the earth will be barren), and the unsolvable loneliness that so many experience despite carrying around a tiny device that claims it can connect them to any human anywhere on earth.

During World War II, tens of thousands of African Americans served in segregated combat units in U.S. armed forces. The majority of these units were found in the U.S. Army, and African Americans served in every one of the combat arms. They found opportunities for leadership unparalleled in the rest of American society at the time. Several reached the field grade officer ranks, and one officer reached the rank of brigadier general. Beyond the Army, the Marine Corps refused to enlist African Americans until ordered to do so by the president in June 1942, and two African American combat units were formed and did see service during the war. While the U.S. Navy initially resisted extending the role of African American sailors beyond kitchens, eventually the crew of two ships was composed exclusively of African Americans. The Coast Guard became the first service to integrate—initially with two shipboard experiments and then with the integration of most of their fleet. Finally, the famous Tuskegee airmen are covered in the chapter on air warfare. Proud Warriors makes the case that the wartime experiences of combat units such as the Tank Battalions and the Tuskegee Airmen ultimately convinced President Truman to desegregate the …

Forty-two commercially collected dumpsters from Denton’s Municipal Solid Waste Stream were emptied, sorted and weighed to characterize the material types and make preliminary recycling policy recommendations. The general composition of Denton’s solid waste stream was not significantly different from the composition of the nation’s solid waste stream. Fifty-eight percent of the observed waste stream was recyclable. Paper made up the largest portion of recyclable materials and the "grocery" source category had more paper than any of the other five categories. Based on these findings, an incrementally aggressive approach is recommended to reduce certain types of wastes observed in the waste stream. This would include a Pay-As-You-Throw Program followed by an Intermediate Processing Center that can be converted to a Materials Recovery Facility.

The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as “possibly the most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.” A native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66, he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny’s twenty Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity. Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship.

This dissertation examines the relationship between economic resilience, disaster experience, and smart growth policies at the local government level. The study is based upon three research questions that examine spatial distribution of economic resilience in Florida cities, and examines the impact of disaster experience, and smart growth policies adopted by local governments on economic resilience. Based upon the bounce-forward approach (Cowell, 2013; Klein et al. 2003), economic resilience is defined using three dimensions—economic stability, economic equity, and economic diversity. The spatial analysis is conducted by mapping economic resilience scores across 780 Census Designated Places in Florida through standard deviation method of classification, and conducting cluster-outlier analysis. Results suggest difference in economic resilience within coastal and inland communities—with higher scores mostly situated inland. East Central Florida, Tampa Bay, and South Florida were identified as high economic resilience clusters, and Northwest Florida was identified as low resilience cluster. Impact of disaster experience, and smart growth policies on economic resilience was examined based upon logic of focusing events by Birkland (1997, 2010). Data was collected from the U.S. Census, the National Climatic Data Center, and the Energy Sustainable Florida Communities Survey conducted by Florida State University in 2009. Results suggest significant association between …

Denton County and the City of Denton are named for pioneer preacher, lawyer, and Indian fighter John B. Denton, but little has been known about him. He was an orphan in frontier Arkansas who became a circuit-riding Methodist preacher and an important member of a movement of early settlers bringing civilization to North Texas. After becoming a ranger on the frontier, he ultimately was killed in the Tarrant Expedition, a Texas Ranger raid on a series of villages inhabited by various Caddoan and other tribes near Village Creek on May 24, 1841. Denton’s true story has been lost or obscured by the persistent mythologizing by publicists for Texas, especially by pulp western writer Alfred W. Arrington. Cochran separates the truth from the myth in this meticulous biography, which also contains a detailed discussion of the controversy surrounding the burial of John B. Denton and offers some alternative scenarios for what happened to his body after his death on the frontier.

Dirty Eddie’s War is the true account of the war-time experiences of Harry Andrew March, Jr., captured by way of diary entries addressed to his beloved wife, Elsa. Nicknamed “Dirty Eddie” by his comrades, he served as a member of four squadrons operating in the South Pacific, frequently under difficult and perilous conditions. Flying initially from aircraft carriers covering the landings at Guadalcanal in August 1942, he was one of the first pilots in the air over the island and then later based at Henderson Field with the “Cactus Air Force.” When he returned to combat at Bougainville and the “Hot Box” of Rabaul, the exploits of the new Corsair squadron “Fighting Seventeen” became legendary. Disregarding official regulations, March kept an unauthorized diary recording life onboard aircraft carriers, the brutal campaign and primitive living conditions on Guadalcanal, and the shattering loss of close friends and comrades. He captures the intensity of combat operations over Rabaul and the stresses of overwhelming enemy aerial opposition. Lee Cook presents Dirty Eddie’s story through genuine extracts from his diary supplemented with contextual narrative on the war effort. It reveals the personal account of a pilot’s innermost thoughts: the action he saw, the effects of …

This collection’s title-as in tether, strike, eyelash, welt-is a nod to the fluidity of language and the foolish penchant we have for naming things, including ourselves. The poems refuse to navigate, choosing instead to face head-on the snares of gender, patriarchy, and parenting. In the closing environmental poems of farewell, the speaker regains communion with nature through the aging body.

US Air Force Forward Air Controllers (FACs) bridge the gap between air and land power. They operate in the grey area of the battlefield, serving as an aircrew who flies above the battlefield, spots the enemy, and relays targeting information to control close air support attacks by other faster aircraft. When done well, Air Force FACs are the fulcrum for successful employment of air power in support of ground forces. Unfortunately, FACs in recent times have been shunned by both ground and air forces, their mission complicated by inherent difficulty and danger, as well as by the vicissitudes of defense budgets, technology, leadership, bureaucracy, and doctrine. Eagles Overhead is the first complete historical survey of the US Air Force FAC program from its origins in World War I to the modern battlefield. Matt Dietz examines their role, status, and performance in every US Air Force air campaign from the Marne in 1918, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and finally Mosul in 2017. With the remaking of the post-Vietnam US military, and the impact of those changes on FAC, the Air Force began a steady neglect of the FAC mission from Operation Desert Storm, through the force reductions after …

Two Counties in Crisis offers a rare opportunity to observe how local political cultures are transformed by state and national events. Utilizing an interdisciplinary fusion of history and political science, Robert J. Dillard analyzes two disparate Texas counties—traditionalist Harrison County and individualist Collin County—and examines four Reconstruction governors (Hamilton, Throckmorton, Pease, Davis) to aid the narrative and provide additional cultural context. Commercially prosperous and built on slave labor in the mold of Deep South plantation culture, East Texas’s Harrison County strongly supported secession in 1861. West Texas’s Collin County, characterized by individual and family farms with a limited slave population, favored the Union. During Reconstruction, Collin County became increasingly conservative and eventually bore a great resemblance to Harrison County. By 1876 and the ratification of the regressive Texas Constitution, Collin County had become firmly resistant to all aspects of Reconstruction.

In the opening decades of the 20th century, war reporting remained one of the most well-guarded, thoroughly male bastions of journalism. However, when war erupted in Europe in August 1914, a Boston woman, Mary Boyle O’Reilly, became one of the first journalists to bring the war to American newspapers. A Saturday Evening Post journalist, Mary Roberts Rinehart, became the first journalist, of any country, of any gender, to visit the trenches. These women were only the first wave of female journalists who covered the conflict. American Women Report World War I collects more than 35 of the best of their articles and those that highlight the richness of their contribution to the history of the Great War. Editor Chris Dubbs provides section introductions for background and context to stories such as “Woman Writer Sees Horrors of Battle,” “Star Woman Runs Blockade,” and “America Meets France.” The work of female journalists focuses more squarely on individuals caught in the conflict—including themselves. It offers a valuable counterpoint to the male, horror-of-the-trenches experience and demonstrates how World War I served as a catalyst that enabled women to expand the public forum for their opinions on social and moral issues.

An elite team of reporters brought the Great War home each week to ten million readers of The Saturday Evening Post. As America’s largest circulation magazine, the Post hired the nation’s best-known and best-paid writers to cover World War I. The Weekly War provides a history of the unique record Post storytellers created of World War I, the distinct imprint the Post made on the field of war reporting, and the ways in which Americans witnessed their first world war. The Weekly War includes representative articles from across the span of the conflict, and Chris Dubbs and Carolyn Edy complement these works with essays about the history and significance of the magazine, the war, and the writers. By the start of the Great War, The Saturday Evening Post had become the most successful and influential magazine in the United States, a source of entertainment, instruction, and news, as well as a shared experience. World War I served as a four-year experiment in how to report a modern war. The news-gathering strategies and news-controlling practices developed in this war were largely duplicated in World War II and later wars. Over the course of some thousand articles by some of the most …