High-contrast astronomical imaging has progressed significantly in the past decade. Many of these techniques have been laboratory demonstrated to perform at contrast levels adequate for the detection of Solar System-like planets and dust around nearby stars. None of them, however, have been demonstrated in space. The state of the art in high-contrast imaging systems that have been built for space-based observation, the environment best suited for spectroscopic study of exo-Earths, is the nulling interferometer that was flown on the Planetary Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Rocket Experiment (PICTURE). The PICTURE nulling interferometer, built from multiple optical elements, relies on the incorporation of additional dispersive components in order to deliver the broadband performance preferred for faint object imaging. These elements add to the cost, complexity, and misalignment risk of the instrument.
The Monolithic Achromatic Nulling Interference Coronagraph (MANIC) Brian Hicks describe in this thesis the first optic of its kind. He has taken the multiple optical element concept described in earlier works from theory to a flyable monolithic optic. Brian has advanced the state of the art in nulling interferometers by improving optical stability and robustness. Following application of the fabrication method described in this work, the design of MANIC also allows for broader band performance at higher contrast than that achieved with the PICTURE nulling interferometer.

High-contrast astronomical imaging has progressed significantly in the past decade. Many of these techniques have been laboratory demonstrated to perform at contrast levels adequate for the detection of Solar System-like planets and dust around nearby stars. None of them, however, have been demonstrated in space. The state of the art in high-contrast imaging systems that have been built for space-based observation, the environment best suited for spectroscopic study of exo-Earths, is the nulling interferometer that was flown on the Planetary Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Rocket Experiment (PICTURE). The PICTURE nulling interferometer, built from multiple optical elements, relies on the incorporation of additional dispersive components in order to deliver the broadband performance preferred for faint object imaging. These elements add to the cost, complexity, and misalignment risk of the instrument. The Monolithic Achromatic Nulling Interference Coronagraph (MANIC) Brian Hicks describe in this thesis the first optic of its kind. He has taken the multiple optical element concept described in earlier works from theory to a flyable monolithic optic. Brian has advanced the state of the art in nulling interferometers by improving optical stability and robustness. Following application of the fabrication method described in this work, the design of MANIC also allows for broader band performance at higher contrast than that achieved with the PICTURE nulling interferometer.

Richly detailed and well-researched, this heartbreaking history unfolds like a political thriller with a deeply human side.--Publishers Weekly
Toward the Setting Sun chronicles one of the most significant but least explored periods in American history, recounting the unknown story of the first white man to champion the voiceless Native American cause.
Son of a Scottish trader and a quarter-Cherokee woman, John Ross was educated in white schools. It was not until he was twenty-two, when he fought alongside his people against the Creek Indians, a neighboring rebel tribe, that he knew the Cherokees' fate would be his. Cherokee chief for forty years, he would guide the tribe through, its most turbulent period.
As increasing numbers of whites settled illegally on the Cherokee Nation's native land, including Ross's beloved home at Head of Coosa, the chief remained steadfast in his refusal to sign a treaty agreeing to removal. When a group of renegade Cherokees betrayed him and negotiated an agreement with Jackson's men behind Ross's back, he was forced to give way and begin the journey west.
In one of America's great tragedies, thousands of Cherokees died during the tribe's migration on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.

On a dark night in February of 1864, the H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat, torpedoed the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic, a feat that would not be repeated for another 50 years. But fate was not kind to the Hunley that night as it sank with all of its crew on board before it could return to shore. Considered by many to be the Civil War's greatest mystery, the Hunley's demise and its resting place have been a topic of discussion for historians and Civil War buffs alike for more than a hundred years. Adding still more to the intrigue, the vessel was discovered in 1995 by a dive team led by famed novelist and shipwreck hunter Clive Cussler, sparking an underwater investigation that resulted in the raising of the Hunley on August 8, 2000. Since that time, the extensive research and restorative efforts underway have unraveled the incredible secrets that were locked within the submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Join Civil War expert Brian Hicks as Sea of Darkness recounts the most historically accurate narrative of the sinking and eventual recovery ever written. Hicks has been given unprecedented access to all the main characters involved in the discovery, raising, and restoration of the Hunley. Complete with a foreword and additional commentary by Clive Cussler, Sea of Darkness offers new, never-before-published evidence on the cause of the Hunley's sinking, providing readers a tantalizing behind-the-scenes look inside the historic submarine.

Thirty-four-year-old Michael Turner calls his life "a swing and a miss." His wife's uncle got him his job. His wife's grandmother got him his house. He travels too much, and his kids are growing up without him. He dreams of creating a new world for his family, but has no idea how to do it. When his wife, Julie, discovers a family secret with the power to alter their lives forever, Michael is forced to confront the one truth he's been avoiding all his life: Sometimes the only way to redirect your future is to reconnect with your past. Whether you're a salesperson, an athlete, a homemaker or an entrepreneur, this modern-day parable will show you that living your dreams isn't some secret, mystical process, and will inspire you to create an astounding new world for yourself and your family. A unique blend of fiction, allegory and inspiration, The Tinderbox Tapes is the debut offering from Speaker Brian Hicks.

During the dark days of the Great Depression, thousands of weary souls escaped their bleak lives for a week of paradise aboard the Ward Line's glamorous cruise ship, the Morro Castle. It was the most famous passenger liner of its day, lightning fast, elegantly appointed. It was also a ticking time bomb. It was the summer of 1934. Two sailors joined the Morro Castle crew, one a teenager on his first job away from home, the other a dangerous psychopath. Within two months, they would witness the end of the party in a single night of death, killer storms, and catastrophic fire. And that was only the beginning of a twenty-year-long story. In When the Dancing Stopped, we too walk up the gangplank to that art-deco liner and, at first, enjoy the glamour and the sultry Havana nights. With mounting suspense, we also witness the launch of a mystery that mesmerized the nation and then, in the midst of troubled times, faded away. Award-winning author Brian Hicks, using newly declassified FBI files, thousands of pages of investigation notes, testimony, and new interviews, takes the reader on a mid-century cruise through history, revealing a cold-case file that had been, until now, left unsolved for history. And, as he relates in this work of masterful storytelling, it all began with the last cruise of the Morro Castle. One of those two men, Thomas Torresson Jr., first sailed on the cruise ship as a high school senior recovering from serious illness and soon found a love that would endure his entire life. Within months, he would join the crew. For George Rogers, a gifted radio operator with a secret past, the ship was merely the latest in a long line of jobs. Their paths would cross several times on the way to their destiny, and the disaster would affect the two in very different ways: one would become famous, the other scarred forever. In the grand tradition of The Devil in the White City, Hicks details a desperate investigation and the search for what may be the modern era's first serial killer through the tragic backdrop of a country suffering through depression and a buildup to war. With cameos by J. Edgar Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway, When the Dancing Stopped is the captivating true story of two men irrevocably bound by history -- a true American hero and a dangerous killer masquerading as one. More than that, there is the larger cast of characters: crew members and passengers, investigators, scoundrels, and, yes, additional victims. For the story that began on that storm-tossed night off the coast of New Jersey continued, as we now learn, for decades to come.

Do variations in institutional design influence the inward flows of foreign direct investment (FDI)? The application of distinctions in the creation of organizations to FDI has been limited. Variations in RTA economic scope and independence gives foreign investors comparable signals as to the extent to which developing governments will apply liberal economic reforms as well as the ability of external agencies to enforce these reforms and protect investments. Conversely, stringent and strongly independent RTAs may actually prove to be inhibiting to foreign investment in developed countries by restricting the previously successful economic actions. I apply a data set of FDI inflows for both developing and developed nations from 1970 to 2003. Controlling for alternative explanations and concerns of endogeneity, I find that elevated levels of both RTA economic scope and independence produce superior inflows of FDI into developing nations, while more independent RTAs actually reduce inward FDI movement into developed nations. This book is addressed to professionals in political science and toward research in the sub-fields of international organization.

On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo--and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost ship "Mary Celeste" has baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. In his stunning new book, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the truth.
The "Mary Celeste" was cursed as soon as she was launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861. Her first captain died before completing the maiden voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But somehow the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. It was Briggs who was at the helm when the "Mary Celeste" sailed into history.
In Brian Hicks's skilled hands, the story of the "Mary Celeste" becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at sea. Hicks vividly recreates the events leading up to the crew's disappearance and then unfolds the complicated and bizarre aftermath--the dark suspicions that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been hauled out to explain the fate of the "Mary Celeste." But, as Brian Hicks reveals, the truth is actually grounded in the combined tragedies of human error and bad luck. The story of the "Mary Celeste" acquired yet another twist in 2001, when a team of divers funded by novelist Clive Cussler located the wreck in a coral reef off Haiti.
Written with the suspense of a thriller and the vivid accuracy of the best popular history, "Ghost Ship" tells the unforgettable true story of the most famous and most fascinating maritime mystery of all time.

"From the Hardcover edition."

The history of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is as astonishing as its disappearance. On February 17, 1864, after a legendary encounter with a Union battleship, the iron “fish boat” vanished without a trace somewhere off the coast of South Carolina. For more than a century the fate of the Hunley remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Civil War. Then, on August 8, 2000, with thousands of spectators crowding Charleston Harbor, the Hunley was raised from the bottom of the sea and towed ashore. Now, award-winning journalists Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropf offer new insights into the Hunley’s final hours and recount the amazing true story of its rescue.

The brainchild of wealthy New Orleans planter and lawyer Horace Lawson Hunley, the Hunley inspired tremendous hopes of breaking the Union’s naval blockade of Charleston, only to drown two crews on disastrous test runs. But on the night of February 17, 1864, the Hunley finally made good on its promise. Under the command of the heroic Lieutenant George E. Dixon, the sub rammed a spar torpedo into the Union sloop Housatonic and sank the ship within minutes, accomplishing a feat of stealth technology that would not be repeated for half a century.

And then, shortly after its stunning success, the Hunley vanished.

This book is an extraordinary true story peopled with a fascinating cast of characters, including Horace Hunley himself, the Union officers and crew who went down with the Housatonic, P. T. Barnum, who offered $100,000 for its recovery, and novelist Clive Cussler, who spearheaded the mission that finally succeeded in finding the Hunley. The drama of salvaging the sub is only the prelude to a page-turning account of how scientists unsealed this archaeological treasure chest and discovered the inner-workings of a submarine more technologically advanced than anyone expected, as well as numerous, priceless artifacts.

Hicks and Kropf have crafted a spellbinding adventure story that spans over a century of American history. Dramatically told, filled with historical details and contemporary color, illustrated with breathtaking original photographs, Raising the Hunley is one of the most fascinating Civil War books to appear in years.


From the Hardcover edition.