Word: naval
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Answer: none of the above, mercifully. William Brinkley, an ex-Navy man who made gentle fun of that service in Don't Go Near the Water, his popular 1956 novel (remember Glenn Ford in the movie?), is serious on this voyage. Instead of another hardware-heavy Tom Clancy naval thriller like The Hunt for Red October, Brinkley's tale has humanity, thoughtfulness and one inspired complication: women. On the Nathan James, not surprisingly nowadays in this man's Navy, 32 crew members are female. Sexual tension and just plain tension mount as the ship, food and fuel dwindling, scours...
...Last Ship is not just a gender-war memoir but an informative travelogue of the destroyer's globe-girdling last voyage, a catalog of naval weaponry and fittings, and a lengthy speculation on the future of man- and womankind. "God is going to give us a second chance?" the Captain wonders as he and his shipmates continue the human habit of baffling and betraying one another. Good question. A scientist might quibble with Brinkley's assumption that sailors would be the likeliest survivors of the next war. But since the species, male and female alike, crawled...
...Soviet warships broadcast a warning beforehand, saying they were authorized "to strike your ship with one of ours," said Capt. Gerry Flynn, a top aide to the chief of naval operations...
...common view of the Crisis has been that President Kennedy "stood eyeball to eyeball" with Khrushchev and that "the other guy blinked." By placing a naval blockade around Cuba and by gradually increasing the military pressure, Kennedy and his advisers took the Soviets to the brink of nuclear war and forced the Kremlin to back down. The missiles were removed at no cost to the United States and a period of detente soon began between the superpowers. Or so the popular theory goes...
...respectability to an operation riddled with waste, tarred by scandal and engulfed by criticism from Congress and the press. The stakes are enormous: unless Costello spends the Pentagon's money wisely, the Soviet Union will overtake the U.S. in the military technology race. Admiral Kinnaird McKee, director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion, has warned that Soviet submarine technology "is rapidly catching up with that in the West...