Josh Dean – författare

The extraordinary true story of Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works”—the radical innovation hub that designed the greatest airplanes of the twentieth century—and the visionary who made it all possible"A kerosene-soaked masterclass in what extreme innovation looks, feels, and even smells like." —New York Times bestselling author Ashlee VanceIt began with a humble warehouse building in Burbank, California, and a charismatic young engineer named Kelly Johnson. In 1938, Johnson, who was then freshly out of the University of Michigan’s school of engineering, got the idea for a small, agile, disruptive engineering shop—one that could help America’s war machine innovate more quickly. By 1943, with the U.S. now in World War II and desperate for new technology, “Advanced Development Projects”—later nicknamed the “Skunk Works”—was born.During Johnson’s forty-seven years at Lockheed Martin, the Skunk Works developed at least half a dozen planes that would have been the capstone achievement of anyone else’s career. There was the P-38 Lighting, which outdueled Axis pilots over Europe and the Pacific. The XP-80, America’s first ever fighter jet, which did indeed help the Allies win World War II. The Constellation, the first passenger plane with a pressurized cabin, revolutionized commercial air travel. The U-2 spy plane, which could reach an astonishing altitude of 70,000 feet, enabling it to fly dangerous covert missions in Soviet airspace during the height of the Cold War. And perhaps most famous of all, the A-12/SR-71 Blackbird, one of the most unusual, and iconic, planes ever designed.But the planes were only part of Kelly Johnson’s legacy. There was also his management style, which would come to shape organizations for decades to come. Under him, the Skunk Works’ structure—flat management, no red tape, extraordinary speed—quickly became the model for nurturing innovation, and eventually would fuel the nimble startups of Silicon Valley. Half a century before Mark Zuckerberg coined the motto “move fast and break things,” Kelly Johnson was living that mantra—and at the same time helping the Department of Defense secure the fate of the free world.

By spending a year alongside rising star Jack, a champion Australian Shepherd, and his friends, magazine journalist Josh Dean rips back the curtain on the dog show world, providing not just a hilarious and often touching portrait of a colorful subculture only slightly exaggerated in the film "Best in Show", but also a revealing look at our love affair with the world's most doted upon and tinkered with animal species, examining the colossal array of dog types and humans who love them. By and large, the book follows Jack as he grows over the course of a year (through Westminster, in February of 2011) from still-improving adolescent to seasoned adult show dog. We get to know him and the people around him, to experience what it's like to own a show dog, and to train one. And at the end of every day we come to appreciate him for what he is, a loveable and intelligent house pet-albeit one with a highly unusual acumen. Supplementing Jack's story is the history and sociology of this eccentric and fascinating subculture of breeders and dog show fanciers.Dean explores the history of breeding and of dog shows, and all the many related peculiarities: judging, training, naming, promoting, hair styling, kennel owning, RV driving, hotel finding, treat selecting, and more.

An incredible true tale of espionage and engineering set at the height of the Cold War—a mix between The Hunt for Red October and Argo—about how the CIA, the U.S. Navy, and America’s most eccentric mogul spent six years and nearly a billion dollars to steal the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine K-129 after it had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean; all while the Russians were watching.In the early hours of February 25, 1968, a Russian submarine armed with three nuclear ballistic missiles set sail from its base in Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. Then it vanished.As the Soviet Navy searched in vain for the lost vessel, a small, highly classified American operation using sophisticated deep-sea spy equipment found it—wrecked on the sea floor at a depth of 16,800 feet, far beyond the capabilities of any salvage that existed. But the potential intelligence assets onboard the ship—the nuclear warheads, battle orders, and cryptological machines—justified going to extreme lengths to find a way to raise the submarine.So began Project Azorian, a top-secret mission that took six years, cost an estimated $800 million, and would become the largest and most daring covert operation in CIA history. After the U.S. Navy declared retrieving the sub “impossible,” the mission fell to the CIA''s burgeoning Directorate of Science and Technology, the little-known division responsible for the legendary U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Working with Global Marine Systems, the country''s foremost maker of exotic, deep-sea drilling vessels, the CIA commissioned the most expensive ship ever built and told the world that it belonged to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who would use the mammoth ship to mine rare minerals from the ocean floor. In reality, a complex network of spies, scientists, and politicians attempted a project even crazier than Hughes’s reputation: raising the sub directly under the watchful eyes of the Russians. The Taking of K-129 is a riveting, almost unbelievable true-life tale of military history, engineering genius, and high-stakes spy-craft set during the height of the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was a constant fear, and the opportunity to gain even the slightest advantage over your enemy was worth massive risk.