The truth about the remaining dark secret of the Iran-Contra scandal- the United States government's collaboration with drug smugglers. Powderburns is the story of Celerino Castillo III who spent 12 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration. During that time, he built cases against organized drug rings in Manhattan, raided jungle cocaine labs in the Amazon, conducted aerial eradication operations in Guatemala, and assembled and trained anti-narcotics units in several countries. The eerie climax of Agent Castillo's career with the DEA took place in El Salvador. One day, he recieved a cable from a fellow agent. He was told to investigate possible drug smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras operating from the ilpango air force base. Castillo quickly discovered that Contra pilots were, indeed, smuggling narcotics back into the United States - using the same pilots, planes, and hangars that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, under the Direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North, used to maintain their covert supply operation to the Contras.

In October, 1998 an arson caused $12 million in damage at Vail, the country's largest ski area. A shadowy radical environmental group called the Earth Liberation Front claimed credit for what the FBI called the costliest act of ecoterrorism in U.S. history. But as it turns out, credible suspects were everywhere, since Vail was owned by a New York investment firm that had alienated a wide swath of Colorado's high country residents."Who couldn't have done this?" wondered a local sheriff's investigator. More than a clever whodunit, Powder Burn scrapes away the glitz of America's premier ski destination to reveal a cautionary tale about runaway opulance and rapid change in the New West. As the Denver Post put it, "Vail is a microcosm of the disputes over growth raging across the Rockies, and Glick's take on the fire helps to fan the flames." Packed with odd characters and paranoia, with beautiful mountains and despicable actions, Powder Burn is about corporate greed, the environment, a small town and a mysterious unsolved crime. As Vail celebrates its fortieth anniversary with a full season of hoopla and self-promotion, this book makes compelling reading for skiers, true crime enthusiasts, or anyone interested in the environmental, social, and political issues raised by the evolution of the new West.

Written by the nation's foremost authority on gunshot wounds and forensic techniques as they relate to firearm injuries, Gunshot Wounds: Practical Aspects of Firearms, Ballistics, and Forensic Techniques, Second Edition provides critical information on gunshot wounds and the weapons and ammunition used to inflict them. The book describes practical aspects of ballistics, wound ballistics, and the classification of various wounds caused by handguns, bang guns, rifles, and shotguns. The final chapters explain autopsy technique and procedure and laboratory analysis relating to weapons and gunshot evidence.

Lavishly illustrated with seventy-four color plates and fifty black-and-white photographs and drawings, Never for Want of Powder tells the story of a world-class munitions factory constructed by the Confederacy in 1861, the only large-scale permanent building project undertaken by a government often characterized as lacking modern industrial values. In this comprehensive examination of the powder works, five scholars--a historian, physicist, curator, architectural historian, and biographer--bring their combined expertise to the task of chronicling gunpowder production during the Civil War. In doing so, they make a major contribution to understanding the history of wartime technology and Confederate ingenuity. Early in the war President Jefferson Davis realized the Confederacy's need to supply its own gunpowder. Accordingly Davis selected Col. George Washington Rains to build a gunpowder factory. An engineer and West Point graduate, Rains relied primarily on a written pamphlet rather than on practical experience in building the powder mill, yet he succeeded in designing a model of efficiency and safety. He sited the facilities at Augusta, Georgia, because of the city's central location, canal transportation, access to water power, railroad facilities, and relative security from attack. As much a story of people as of machinery, Never for Want of Powder recounts the ingenuity of the individuals involved with the project. A cadre of talented subordinates--including Frederick Wright, C. Shaler Smith, William Pendleton, and Isadore P. Girardey--assisted Rains to a degree not previously appreciated by historians. This volume also documents the coordinated outflow of gunpowder and ammunition, and Rains's difficulty in preparing for the defense of Augusta. Today a lone chimney along the Savannah River stands as the only reminder of the munitions facility that once occupied that site. With its detailed reproductions of architectural and mechanical schematics and its expansive vista on the Confederacy, Never for Want of Powder restores the Augusta Powder Works to its rightful place in American lore.

The present volume contains in one binding the whole contents of Volume I, first published in May, 1941, and the whole contents of Volume II which was published in March, 1943. The book was primarily for chemists. The writing of it was commenced in order that a textbook might be available for the use of students in the course in powder and explosives which the author gave for about twenty years (nearly every year since the first World War) to fourth-year and graduate students of chemistry and of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[...] The aim of the book has been to describe as clearly and interestingly as possible, and as fully as seemed profitable the modes of behavior, both physical and chemical, of explosive substances, whether these modes find practical application or not. Historical material has been included where it was thought that it contributed to this end, and has not been included elsewhere or for any other reason. It is a fact that a knowledge of the history of ideas, of persons, or of things produces something of the same sympathetic understanding of them that living with them and working with them does.-Print ed.