New Releases by III Sullenberger

Since the early nineteenth century, Byron, the man and his image, have captured the hearts and minds of untold legions of people of all political and social stripes in Britain, Europe, America, and around the world. This book focuses on the history and cultural significance for Federal America of the only portrait of Byron known to have been painted by a major artist. In private hands from 1826 until this day, Thomas Sully''s Byron has never before been the subject of scholarly study. Beginning with his discovery of the portrait in 1999 and a 200-year narrative of the portrait''s provenance and its relation to other well-known Byron portraits, the author discusses the work within the broad context of British and American portraiture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Receiving most attention are Thomas Lawrence and Sully, his American counterpart. The author gives the fullest account to date of Sully''s career and his relation to English influences and to figures prominent in the early-nineteenth-century American imagination, among them, Washington, Fanny Kemble, Lafayette, Joseph Bonaparte, and Nicholas Biddle. Byron is discussed as an icon of the young American Republic whose Jubilee year coincided with Sully''s initial work on the poet''s portrait. Later chapters offer a close reading of the portrait, arguing that Sully has given a visual interpretation truly worthy of his celebrated, controversial, and famously handsome subject.

On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed one of the most remarkable emergency landings in aviation history when Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger glided US Airways Flight 1549 onto the surface of the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. To Sullenberger, a pilot with forty years of flying experience who is also a safety consulting expert, the landing was not a miracle but rather the result of years of practice and training -- wisdom he gained in the cockpit of U.S. Air Force jets and in his Texas boyhood. Born to a World War II veteran and dentist father and an elementary school teacher mother, Sully fell in love with planes early. He learned to fly as an eager 16-year-old from a crop duster, an older neighbor in north Texas, who took off and landed his fragile plane on the grass field behind his house. While Sully's father encouraged his interest in flying, he also imparted stern advice he'd learned from his Navy service during World War II: a commander is responsible for everyone in his care -- and those words have shaped Sully's life and work and continue to guide him today. This book reveals the important lessons Sully learned through childhood, in his military service, and in his work as a commercial airline pilot.