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When we entered Afghanistan airspace, the mountainous terrain full of snow reminded me of when I flew over them as an air force pilot.

Where I live in the United States, I am close to a mountain range where it snows during the winter, but these mountains, of my native land, are very different. Seeing them took me back to another time in my life. It reminded me of the people who live around these mountains in the most primitive way of life with roots so deep and structured by tradition that they are perversely proud that the most powerful nation of the world, the United States, has difficulty understanding why they behave the way they do.

We landed at Kabul International Airport. Things looked very different from what I remembered from forty years before. It did not look like the same country I left so long ago. Everything was filthy and broken. My wife, Fahima, and I couldn’t hold back our tears. Through them we saw our country, which besides being primitive, was now ruined. The innocence of the country that I knew was gone. When we got out of the airplane, my cousin Mary (Mauree jan Ashraf) was waiting for us with a car. She warned me not to hug and hold her like we used to. Unlike the way she dressed while in the west, she was now covered from head to toe. The road to Kabul was totally different; many traffic circles and shack-like stores all around the street. Most buildings had barbed wire surrounding them for safety. One traffic circle named after the Soviet war hero Ahmad Shah Massoud (according to what I heard) was the most dangerous where suicide bombers (a tactic from Iraq) got close to a car they suspected was carrying foreigners, then blew up themselves and the cars around them. Check points by coalition and Afghan security forces were all around us. We headed toward the house where my cousin lived, which was next to the palace. I remembered the palace and the streets around it but I couldn’t tell where I was. Most of the roads were barricaded and unrecognizable, barbed wire and guards were everywhere. To my disappointment I couldn’t find my own home—where I was raised as a boy. The roads were blocked and when we got out of the car there were beautiful kids begging everywhere. As we passed by every corner, the flashback of my youth, my friends, our playgrounds; nothing matched—nothing I saw was the same.

Fahima, and I cried for days for what was lost.

I think it was at that point, even if only subconsciously at the time, when I knew I must write this story. It’s largely about me and my family; where we came from, some of our past and present—and some about the future. Throughout it you’ll find a message of faith and belief in one’s self and in following your heart. And it’s about doorways that we step through in life. It’s been said, “When one door closes, another one opens.” I believe this to be true—it has been so for me personally.

It is sad that for Afghanistan those doors continue to lead to tenuous structures often without walls and ceilings; no roof, no stability. Just an opening that exposes its people to any number of outside influences and interference. To understand more of how and why that is so, in this story, I’ve included some of Afghanistan’s past, present and thoughts on its future as well. I hope that you will sit for a while, read my story and even listen to the words and what they share with you. For the reader I promise that there are things you will glean from the reading and that you will learn about Afghanistan you did not know before.

ISBN: 978-1-937592-09-7
Page Count: 404

Coming Soon

That China is a rising global power asserting her presence on the global stage is undeniable. The Twilight of America’s Omnipresence is about the challenge posed by China to America’s imposing presence in global affairs as the latter veers precipitously towards an historical crescendo. A race is clearly in progress as the two powers occupy center stage and vie for primacy. The “infinite’ is the effectuation of unparalleled sway held at subatomic and genetic levels, the influence of the collective human mind, a global information grid seized with the proficiency and faculty to connect traditional forms of information with all source intelligence, and expansionism in the realms of inner and outer space. These constitute the locales for the inevitable showdown. Whether and for how long America endures as the world’s first and only Superpower as China makes an all out bid to claim global dominance will be determined by three instrumentalities – ideas, ideology and technology. The Twilight of America’s Omnipresence transports its readership in real time to the dawn of the new millennium whereupon China thrusts her stakes into Inter-American soil, preens her wings, and prepares for full flight.

…America’s ideological apparatus poses as a detriment to the emergence of other great power contenders. Thus, China would find it overwhelmingly difficult to propose a system of ideas and ideals antithetical to those championed by the US and overwhelmingly embraced by countries worldwide, as the epitome of a free, just, and progressive society…

…Concerning cyber and industrial espionage, many camps have wagered on the capability of China to seriously debilitate the US economically or militarily in the sphere of cyber war. Some of these conjectures were satisfied in the findings of a 2009 Report entitled “Capability of the people’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation…

…While China on the one hand has locked herself into a mindset that holds a steady gaze on numbers, size, and scale, the US has migrated into efficiencies of scale that necessarily compel de-scaling to avoid mass casualties, whilst simultaneously exploiting the full advantages of stealth and inner space…

From Dennis Lowery

My friend and colleague, James G. Zumwalt’s book on the Vietnam war is a remarkable work. It touches on a perspective that has not been shared before. Watch this PBS Newshour interview with Jim to discuss “Bare Feet, Iron Will ~ Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields“. I was fortunate to be there for the interview, behind one of the cameramen. The only non-PBS person other than Jim, for this taping at the PBS studio in Washington DC. I’m very proud to have helped Jim publish this book.

Customer Review from Gordon Fu

Tom Faught outlines a sound methodology for getting to the next level and beyond. He shares insights based on both real-world experience and careful introspection. The “plan” allows for varying degrees of flexibility, depending on one’s current position and career goals. With a hands-on approach, Faught points out one’s glaring weaknesses, strengths, and areas of obligatory improvement. My copy is filled with my notes and I’m not sharing my copy. Get your own! Happy reading…

By Chip Armstrong

Wars: Then & Now by Rick Waddell

Buy this book if you want to understand if America will have the national heart and political will to be ready for our next national emergencies. Will we have the foresight to look beyond our most recent war(s) to prognosticate how to fight new types of enemies in new ways?

I strongly recommend this quick read by the former Army football team captain, Rhodes Scholar, Columbia University Ph.D., corporate executive, and brigadier general.

Buy “Wars: Then & Now” by Dr. Rick Waddell if you enjoy books on national security, military history, and the state of the USA. Rick has always been a man of few words. When he speaks, it is always well thought out. Likewise, his latest book reads quickly, and it gets to his various points by relying on facts, photos, charts, and cogent summations without burdening the reader with unnecessary verbosity. The 277 pages seemed to fly by without a lull. In other words, the former West Point professor has written an entertaining and accessible book for the average reader, government and military professionals, and academics. Ultimately, it provides a framework for understanding America’s wars– past, current, and future– in context to one another. As the saying goes, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

Especially consider buying this book if you lived through and/or served in the military during the ’60s through the 21st Century. Rick’s brilliance is his ability to take wide swaths of disparate history, find the threads of continuity, and tell a story of what happened then, and how it’s apropos now and the future.

By Jay M. Siegel

Flotsam & Jetsam | A collection of Sea Stories that have washed ashore during a forty-year career in the United States Navy

As I read Hank McKinney’s book, I was fascinated and amazed by his ability to recount details of every phase of his Navy career, from midshipman to admiral. His recall is truly incredible. And not only does he recall events, he relates them with understanding, with humor, and with depth. Having retired from the Navy after 35 years of service, I look back through a fog of memories. Hank McKinney looks back through a microscope, and one with a crystal-clear lens. For anyone who has served in the Navy this book will bring back memories long-forgotten. For anyone who has not served, the book will entertain, delight, and inform.

ISBN: 978-1-937592-05-9 (hardcover with dust-jacket)
Page Count: 188

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Our latest business and career educational title 

Part of making things happen as an individual, in your career, or as a company is taking a hard look at things and saying, “These are my flaws. These are my shortcomings. These are the self-defeating actions where I’ve shot my success in the foot.” Any person or company who says they’ve never done those things is hindering their success, ruining their achievement, and unwittingly keeping themselves stuck in the middle. The unwillingness to do a hard current state assessment is a barrier between getting what you want and continuing to lack what you need. Finding that progress gap is the secret ingredient in the magic formula for understanding what it is that you need (not necessarily what you want) and then taking the steps to get that result (which leads to what you want). Talent management is indeed a business imperative to build and grow a successful organization … but more importantly it is also a personal imperative for professionals to build successful careers.

When people don’t employ personal talent management in the way of owning their own succession plan; when companies and organizations don’t build and sustain an integrated talent management strategy; they remain stuck in the middle; somewhere between who they are and who they want to be. How to get unstuck, how to break free from the middle is what individuals and organizations often don’t understand.  That critical understanding (and ability to take action on it to improve your situation) is what you’ll find in this book as told through the eyes of a member of Generation X.

From the author:

I think the best way to teach is to provide examples… preferably real and not hypothetical ones constructed purely for the sake of answering a question. Real experience. Real events. Real decisions… with real outcomes. ‘What I did, why I did it, and what happened next’ kind of examples. That is how I’ve approached this book you have in your hands. There will be some , what I feel are astute, Generation X observations on life and certainly on career at it relates to talent management but these are only part of what I want to share with you. I meet a lot of people who, like me, are Gen Xers who are trying to figure out “How do I make it in corporate America?” I have had career success and reached fairly senior positions for ‘someone of my age’ with more than one Fortune 100 company. So people come to me and ask, “What does it take to get to where you are?” How did I do it? Did I have to sell my soul, strike a deal with the devil, or some different compromising scenario that was traded in an effort for quick success?

And then I tell them my career story, which you will find in this book. It is a story steeped in my passion to help organizations solve the dilemma of how and when to buy, build, or borrow the talent they need, while not losing focus on running their business today. This story and the same passion will speak to individuals as well and give them insights and actionable advice on applying proven talent management principles to improve the trajectory of their own careers.

Book Review from NewsOK:

Leadership In Action, should be read and studied by those who seek to make a difference. According to the author (retired Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic), honor, courage and commitment must be the cornerstones for our country’s return to greatness.

Read More

Hardcover: 44 pages

ISBN: 978-1937592035

AVAILABLE FOR ORDER NOW

This book with its color photography and brief stories of children with Trisomy 21 (more commonly known as Down Syndrome) shows the children as they are—beautiful individuals with all the character and uniqueness parents are proud of in their kids.

While anyone can admire the beauty and sparkle of the wonderful children in this book we do hope that it raises awareness of the tremendous responsibility that falls on the parents of children with Down Syndrome. 

All profits from this book go to charities that help parents bear that responsibility.

Kristina and her daughter Giselle

ONEWorld - a children's book imprint from Adducent

From Dennis Lowery

Our (my) focus in all that we do is that the message is positive.

Not ‘rose-colored glasses’ denying reality kind of positive but a belief that even when things are hard and bad things happen… that there is hope. But hope is not a solution. It should drive us to action to make things happen. I believe things are hopeless only if you give up.

I want our books, any films based on them and now music (as that effort shapes up) to bear that message. And I want them to also have a strong thread and theme of personal accountability and responsibility for our own lives and to have faith in our ability to control what happens in life. I think it’s particularly important that children learn this as soon as possible.

Another aspect of modern life today, that I want our titles to address,  is reflected in a thought provoking article titled : What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? I’ll paste a quote here from it:

The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

The development of Personal Character. The strength of which not only builds better lives but also better communities and country. In some ways we’ve lost sight of that. And what better way to help reinstill or resurrect a focus on that than to make it one of the themes for our new children’s book imprint.

Our first title, coming out for the holidays, is The Forgotten Ornament (we’ll be announcing details on it within the next week). We have twelve other titles slated to come out in 2012.