Much of what happened in these pages could have happened last November or just aboout any November. Most of these events happened in November of 1993, which is significant because of the horrific floods that inundated the Nation's heartland that year. However, little did we think about some of those imminent dangers that awaited us that fall when we steered the "Harper's Ferry" sailboat out of its home port into the mammoth Lake Superior for the last time. We were literally and figuratively launching a journey that, to the best of anyone's knowledge, had never been taken before. No one, as far as we knew, ever piloted a 47-foot, deep-draft Gulfstar sailboat all the way from Washburn, Wisconsin to Freeport, Texas. It was the first leg of a water-logged odyssey that would take "We Three: Fred, the Ferry Boat, and Me" some 2,400 miles through three of the Great Lakes and down the nation's Inland Waterways - the Chicago, the Illinois, and the Mississippi rivers - to the Gulf of Mexico. In making this epic voyage, never did we think we would be risking our lives many times during the month-long journey. I, for one, thought it was simply going to be like a walk in the park. It turned out to be more like a walk in a park full of muggers.

Through the pages of "The Rivers of Life - and Death," nine horrific tragedies on the Nation's inland waterways, stretching back over 41 years (1964-2005) are graphically reported. September 22, 1993 was, without a doubt, the darkest day in the American towboating industry's 200-year history. At 2:45 that morning, the towboat Mauvilla, pushing six barges in dense fog, nudged a railroad bridge, causing the derailment of Amtrak's Sunset Limited passenger train. Forty-seven hapless souls plunged to their deaths in an alligator- and snake-infested murky bayou near Mobile, Alabama. One-hundred-and-three others were injured in the flaming carnage. Other dark days have been: June 16, 1964 - April 6, 1969 - August 1, 1974 - May 28, 1993 July 15, 2001 - September 15, 2001 - May 26, 2002 - January 9, 2005 Those nine days saw towboats and their barges slam into highway and railroad bridge pilings, collide with another vessel, run over a fishing boat, and wash over a dam. The resulting catastrophes ended the lives of 114 unsuspecting motor vehicle occupants, railroad train passengers and crew, fishermen, and mariners in those nine separate accidents. "The Rivers of Life - and Death" is meant for those who have traveled on and/or marveled at any of this nation's 25,000 miles of inland waterways - the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Illinois, the Ohio, the Gulf Intracoastal Canal, etc. For those who have navigated the locks or merely putt-putted up and down those waterways - whether commercially or as a pleasure boater - the stories herein (told in reverse chronological order) are for you. It may also be that this book will find its way into the crews' quarters on many of the 3,000-plus towboats and tugs that ply those waterways. To some of them with whom we have traveled the inland waterways, we say "Hello" again. To all of them, we say "God Speed." And last, but surely not least, "The Rivers of Life - and Death" may ironically bring some small sparks of knowledge to everyone about how that breakfast cereal on your table this morning got there.

There is a distinct and vitally active move afoot in this country to do away with the death penalty - a movement generally headed up by social liberals in search of a "cause." And, as most polls show, those abolitionists are winning because most of America's vast "silent majority" is conceding the argument through inaction and default. Support for the death penalty is diminishing. "An Eye for an Eye: In Defense of the Death Penalty" is an attempt to overcome the ignorance and apathy that grows despite a series of recent studies that show the death penalty IS a deterrent to murder. "An Eye for an Eye" strives to preserve, protect, and defend the concept: For a crime there must be a punishment; the punishment must fit the crime - and for the ultimate crime there must be the ultimate punishment.