Captain Thomas A. Davis, USN
(ret.) “served in a variety of ships as a surface line officer and commanded a Destroyer and an LST in combat.
As a staff officer ashore, he served in many locations. The author was assigned two tours in Washington, D.C., and commanded
a shore station. He established two businesses after a career in the navy. While operating these businesses, he was elected
as President of the local Chamber of Commerce.” Captain Thomas A. Davis is the author of Echoes
in Time and Victories Lost.
According to the book description
of Echoes In Time, it “blends the themes of alien contact with the discovery of an asteroid
in an orbit that will lead to a collision with earth. The "alien" culture, as the story develops, is not from some
far-off star system, but the star-traveling descendants of an earth-born race of dinosaurs that evolved shortly before their
own budding civilization was destroyed by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago. The ship bearing a member of the Kirraka,
as these not-so-alien beings call themselves, lands in a remote area of Texas. When military units and aircraft move aggressively
into the area surrounding the ship, they are attacked with powerful weapons from the alien ship (based on the assumption that
star travelers wouldn't survive long without providing for their own protection against the spears and arrows of local
savages) and the ship leaves with a powerful display of physical capabilities and disdain for the efforts to prevent their
departure. A bizarre message is left at the landing spot that specifically names a person that the aliens wish to use as their
sole contact, an obscure woman paleontologist and late Cretaceous period scholar, Edith Izzard. Contact with an advanced alien culture is viewed by Washington
to have enormous economic and social consequences and importance. The resources of the federal government are turned to locating
Edith and converting her to the governments "side" in dealings with the aliens. Edith is not easily convinced, or
converted, to any side, especially as it becomes clear that if she does not cooperate she would forfeit her individual freedom
and be coerced to do the government's will. When an asteroid is discovered heading for the earth, the importance of the
technology available to an advanced culture seems crucial, and Edith's cooperation ever more essential in utilizing the
power of the alien science to avoid global disaster. Edith retains her freedom, establishes contact with the alien, K. Word
of the impending asteroid collision leaks to the population of the world, and chaos builds. The entire civilization can't
be saved, but a compromise is worked out in partnership with the former residents of the planet.”
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According to the book description of
Victories Lost, it “is projected against the backdrop of the struggle between President Harry
S. Truman and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur over Korean War policy, and the use of nuclear weapons. MacArthur, intent
on gaining victory over the North Korean and the Communist Chinese forces, planned to encourage Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
(driven from the mainland by the Communists in 1949) to invade the Chinese mainland with his large standing army from his
refuge on Formosa. MacArthur planned to support the Nationalist Chinese attack with his own landings on the mainland using
United Nations (predominantly American) forces. No weapon was to be held back in his pursuit of victory. To this end his staff
drew up a target list of ten cities on the Chinese mainland to be destroyed with the "atomic" weapons. As a final
twist, a band of radioactive waste ten miles wide was to be laid on the north side of the Yalu River, the boundary between
China and North Korea, as a barrier between the mainland Chinese and the North Koreans. Truman's military and foreign
policy was diametrically opposed to MacArthur's sense of "winning" the war in Asia.”
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