Search results for ""Author Robert Irving Desourdis""

This book describes the work to be done in building an automated pandemic prevention and response capability for the US with international extensions and extendibility using artificial intelligence. The complexity of operational decisions, information sharing, situational awareness, and planned/ongoing actions by thousands of actors in pandemic prevention, preparedness and response is far too great for anyone to manage effectively. The deaths and economic devastation caused by COVID-19 yet again proved this fact, much like all other major disasters we have endured. There are too many organisations, too many differing plans and agendas, too many different people of varying experience in positions of responsibility, and too much information as well as critical need for optimal decisions and actions, to avoid calamity during the inevitable next pandemic. We need automated planning, information vetting/sharing and rapid action to optimize prevention and, if not prevented, response to minimize spread. Volume I laid out the case for a better approach than exists in the U.S. today, and our nation's military -- touted as the best in the world -- employs methodologies with precision and fidelity that optimise rapid decision making for human-sized enemies. It turns out these same methodologies and associated technologies work just as well with our microscopic enemies, like COVID-19. This book provides an overview of how it should be developed, implemented and evolved nationwide before the next pandemic. Seems like we finally should get our "act" together, otherwise the toll for passage of the next virus could be far higher as we remain unprepared. It will be hard and extensive work, which some have referenced the "Manhattan Project" or the Apollo Program, but the COVID-19 death count mandates we apply our best effort to prevent another pandemic disaster. We are better equipped now than ever to do so.

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Edwin Bearss' Government career created National Parks and Presidential Historic Parks, including his direct relationships with President Lyndon B. Johnson and President Jimmy Carter. He created and improved many parks, and thus, made the history that Americans see and read when they experience these important American lands, battlefields and buildings. Ed Bearss has made indelible marks on the American landscape, and in so doing, defined much of the historical culture of the United States. His contribution to our understanding of American history is immense. He is the author of 140 National Park Service reports, more than any other person to work for the National Park Service. The quality and popularity of his tours and books are rare among present-day historians. He has mentored generations of younger historians who now teach American history, and continue along the path he has pioneered. He has frequently testified before Congress, was interviewed by television reporters and guided senior-level Government officials in critical events in American history. Ed Bearss became a television celebrity following his appearance to mass television audiences who watched the Ken Burns Civil War Series on PBS, leading to great demand in Bearss-led battlefield history tours. For those many U.S. history adventurers who have experienced his history tours, Ed Bearss' words and mannerisms leap from the page as we follow him walking Pickett's Charge at the Gettysburg; track John Wilkes Booth's escape route after assassinating President Abraham Lincoln; recount George Armstrong Custer's battlefield defeat by Native Americans whose families he had attacked along the Little Big Horn River; and words describing the WWI American sacrifice at Belleau Wood of U.S. Marine mythology. This book will explain Ed Bearss' unsurpassed contribution to the making of American history and the strengthening our collective culture.

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The Italian Campaign is truly an amazing, and often heartbreaking, story, and it certainly generates sympathy as well as respect for the soldiers who fought there, particularly the sacrificed Texas and Polish soldiers as well as the British "D-Day Dodgers." In addition to the British soldiers, you gain a new and far greater appreciation of the men in the 36th Texas and Polish Divisions because of their commitment, heroism and sacrifice in these battles, much less the many others from multiple nations who fought in Italy in 1943 and 1944. This book is the first title in the NOVA Science Publishers Homeland Security Series presenting a walking tour of World War II battle sites in mainland Italy: 1. A Walking Tour of Italy's WWII Battlefields: From the Salerno Landings to San Pietro Infine 2. A Walking Tour of Italy's WWII Battlefields: Breaking the Gustav and Hitler Lines 3. A Walking Tour of Italy's WWII Battlefields: From the Anzio Landings to Rome. These books were derived from the sights and sounds I experienced while on Marty Gane's South Mountain Expeditions tour called WWII Invasion of Italy: From Sicily to Rome, which she conducted in September 2014. The late Edwin Cole Bearss was the lead South Mountain historian for the tour, and helped select our expert history guide British Lt Col (Retd) Frank de Planta de Wildenberg, a deservedly renown Italian battlefield tour leader. Franks designed the tour route, providing the specific strategic and tactical on-the-ground details we experienced at each stand (tour location) we visited. Ed Bearss provided insightful color commentary and likened situations to his own combat experience as a Marine in the WWII Pacific theater. This book provides the images and narration of Frank and Ed as we were taken from the Allied seaborne landings at Salerno to the fights for the high ground surrounding the beachhead to the devastation wrought at San Pietro Infine, the subject of a well-known period film by John Houston. During the development of the Ed Bearss memoir trilogy books (see Footnote 7 above), I created the preliminary Italian tour history that has been reviewed, vastly improved and supplemented by Frank de Planta, necessarily and deservedly the book's first author. Working with someone like Frank de Planta, as with both Ed Bearss and Barney Nolan in their memoirs, has proven (almost) as enjoyable as touring the Italian battlefields. Creating this book series brought back many emotive sights, sounds, stories and emotions (unfortunately, not the food) I felt while on the tour. We hope it provides some sense of that experience for the reader. Many excellent academic books have been written explaining Italian battlefield events to the detail, and we include these books in Frank's exhaustive bibliography. However, this book brings the tour experience, being there on the ground, as close as possible to reality for the reader by showing you many images from where the armies fought and died to set Italy free and attack the "soft underbelly" of the Third Reich. Its purpose is to have the reader experience the tour as we did, incorporating images from the extensive video I took that September in Italy. It was hard to imagine the violence that happened there over 75 years ago. Our tour guide, Frank de Planta, with color commentary from Ed Bearss, provided an emotive and accurate explanation of the events, the scenes, and the sacrifice. We hope this book provides at least a fraction of the experience many on this tour experienced there.

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