Joe Cuhaj – författare

Best Dog Hikes Alabama details the best dog friendly hiking trails in the Heart of Dixie. From mountain views to the coveted coast, there’s a trail for you and your trusty companions. Throughout are full-color photos and maps, helpful tips, and tailored hike specs with information on leash requirements, trail surface, other trail users, and more. You’ll also find important advice about hiking with dogs and preparation before you hit the trail. Grab the leash, don your pack, and get ready for an adventure that will have tails wagging for days to come.

Features• Hikes suited to every ability• Detailed maps and clear driving directions from multiple starting points• GPS coordinates for both trailheads and waterfalls• Comprehensive trail descriptions with mile-by-mile directional cues• Waterfall height and beauty rating• Many easily accessible roadside falls; hikes include average hiking time and difficulty rating • Trail Finder including best hikes for backcountry camping, swimming holes, and the least (and most)populated trails • Information on fees and permits, contacts, and more

The premier guide to 50 of the greatest hikes in Alabama. Inside readers will find detailed maps, accurate route profiles showing the ups and downs of each hike, tips on equipment, trip planning, and hiking with dogs and children, accurate directions, difficulty ratings, trail contacts, and more.

Best Easy Day Hikes Birmingham presents approximately twenty easy-to-follow, accessible, and scenic trails in and around Birmingham, Alabama.Written by an expert local hiker, this guide describe the best hikes for those who have limited time or abilities, without missing out on the area’s scenic splendors.

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The Pig War and the Pelican Girls is a riveting and well-researched collection of little-known and obscure tales from history. This page-turner unearths the stories of men and women who strove to save their country from aggressors or better the lives of others or simply survive under mysterious and extraordinary circumstances.

From the tale of the Pelican Girls, a group of women deemed “of virtuous character” by the Catholic church and sent to the first French colonies in the New World in an attempt to re-create the Garden of Eden, to the story of “The Limping Lady, ” declared the most dangerous of all Allied spies by the Germans in World War II, the true tale of Pan American Airlines signing up passengers for a flight to the moon when mankind had barely left Earth orbit, and many, many more, Joe Cuhaj reveals real-life history that has been buried for centuries.

Whether you’re an armchair historian or a lover of all things unusual and astonishing, this collection of obscure history shows that life surely is stranger than fiction.

Nothing captivates the human imagination like the vast unknowns of space. Ancient petroglyphs present renderings of the heavens, proof that we have been gazing up at the stars with wonder for thousands of years. Since then, mankind has systematically expanded our cosmic possibilities. What were once flights of fancy and dreams of science fiction writers have become nearly routine – a continuous human presence orbiting the Earth, probes flying beyond our solar system, and men walking on the moon. NASA and the Russian space program make traveling to the stars look easy, but it has been far from that. Space travel is a sometimes heroic, sometimes humorous, and always dangerous journey fraught with perils around every corner that most of us have never heard of or have long since forgotten.

Space Oddities brings these unknown, offbeat, and obscure stories of space to life. From the showmanship and bravado of the earliest known space fatality, German Max Valier, to the first ever indictment under the Espionage Act on an Army officer who leaked secrets concerning the development of early U.S. rockets; and the story of a single loose bolt that defeated the Soviet Union’s attempt to beat America to the moon.

Author Joe Cuhaj also sheds light on the human aspects of space travel that have remained industry secrets – until now: how the tradition of using a musical playlist to wake astronauts up began, fascinating tales about inventions like the Fischer Space Pen, Omega watches, and even Tang breakfast drink.

In addition to fun and entertaining space trivia, Space Oddities also features stories of the profound impact that space travel has had on challenges right here at home, like the effort by civil rights leaders and activists in the 1960s to bring the money from the space program back home to those in need on Earth; NASA’s FLATs (First Lady Astronaut Training) program and the 13 women who were selected to become astronauts in 1960, but were denied a chance at flying even after successfully completing the rigorous astronaut training program; and, the animals who many times sacrificed their lives to prove that man could fly in space.

Filled with rare and little-known stories, Space Oddities will bring the final frontier to the homes of diehard space readers and armchair astronauts alike.

Much has been written about the legendary flight of Apollo 11 and mankind’s first tentative steps into deep space. It’s often said that the world stopped, watching in awe as the crew of Apollo 11 completed their mission. It is true that in that moment, almost everyone had virtually gone to the moon as people around the world gazed in wonderment at the grainy black-and-white images of Neil Armstrong taking that first step onto the surface of another world. But that was a fleeting moment and just as quickly, the moment was gone– wars raged on, protestors filled the streets, and average Americans went back to their daily lives.

Everyone’s Gone to the Moon is a week-by-week journey through July 1969, one of the most pivotal months in human history – in space and here on Earth. This unique book follows the crew of Apollo 11 and NASA as they prepare for the historic first lunar landing alongside the major global events buried beneath headlines covering the historic space mission. Interwoven with the story of Apollo 11 are the events on our home planet that made an equally important impact on who we were then and who we are today: the Life of Prince Charles was threatened by a terrorist attack in Wales; the storm dubbed the Ohio Fireworks Derecho ripped through the Midwest, killing dozens; the assassination of Kenyan Economic Minister Tom Myoba (of which Barack Obama Sr. was a key witness) undercut a nation just learning to stand on its own; Senator Ted Kennedy was involved in a mysterious accident in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts; ARPANET, the first real “Internet” was unveiled; Monty Python was born; John Lennon and Paul McCartney released “Give Peace a Chance” during escalated Vietnam War tensions; Midnight Cowboy stunned the Academy Awards; and much more.

Meanwhile, NASA was still scrambling. Everyone’s Gone to the Moon features little known behind-the-scenes stories of the moon landing like how NASA had to grapple with media, the technical issues that still plagued the lunar module, and how the prior crew of Apollo 10 suffered incredible itching from their spacesuits that needed correcting before Apollo 11 could even be launched.

This deep dive into the Apollo 11 mission’s most crucial weeks and the little-known and rarely remembered events occurring simultaneously back on Earth gives a vivid new perspective to the month that launched humanity into the future.