Books

This is relatively new territory for me, creating my own book. Not that I haven't visited this territory before. A few years ago I had been in talks with a Wiley publisher on a project, and I have worked with other authors, but my own book? Yes, it is happening. Actually, it already has. The crapcan book, "How On Fire Are We?", is a compilation of stories from fellow Lemons and ChumpCar racers. But aiming higher, sort of, I've resumed work on earlier book projects and have drafted several others, enough to flesh out the concept.

	Study Guide for Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering - Many years ago, when I first started developing and writing laboratory experiments for the students, Jim Shackelford asked if we like to work with him to create a companion study guide for his text book. Sure. We could do that. And my colleague Jerrold Franklin and I did.		Instructor's Manual for Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering - Three years, for the fifth edition of Jim Shackelford's text book, we put together a much more substantial manual, over 600 pages for the instructor. This manual contained updated experiments, supplemental material, and the solutions to the example and homework problems.
	Laboratory Experiments for Materials Science - This is a rewrite of the experiments and demonstrations I developed for the courses and outreach events I was involved in. They are being updated and reformatted for a larger, more general, audience.		How On Fire Are We? - A labor of love that tries to capture the spirit of crapcan racing, as told by the racers themselves. This thing ended up being a 320 page beast, with over 400 photos and illustrations, and yet more teams wanted to get their stories in it. There are rumors of a second volume, and crazy rumors of an audio book.
	Horrible Idea - This story is not about making motoring history. It's not about a fantasy car and it's not even about impressing our friends. It's about the deciding this "horrible idea" was a good idea, then going for it.		Road Trip - It's not simply about the hours, the days, the miles together in a car as the sights go by. It's about the years knowing you as our lives go by. Someday we'll get there, to our destination, not that that was ever our real goal. Sharing this road together, every minute, every mile, was why we were doing this.
	Race Day - When my nephew Kai was only four years old I laid out a race track in my home using masking tape, then photographed his Playmobile F1 cars to create a story about racing. I didn't finish it, and the cars are long gone, but for Chistmas in his last year of college I finally comepleted it and presented it to him as a book.		The Colborns - Subtitled "Walter, Anna, and History", it's a genealogy-driven story about the lives of two people who experienced first hand a number of the major events of the early twentieth century, including the big steel strike, the Lincoln Highway, and the Saint Francis Dam failure that killed Walter. With Walter's death Anna this becomes a women's story that takes her through the depression, the dust bowl migrations to California, the Kern County oil boom, World War II, and finally to homesteading in Alaska.
	Blue Fires at Dawn - is a story about the life of one of early Ag aviation's premiere pilots. It tells of his early days learning to fly and crop dusting in the Southern United States, his adventures in Nicaragua, working for Louise Hatchock and the Stateline Gang, a violent encounter with disgruntled Mexican dusters, and his eventual move to California where he dusted, sprayed, fertilized, and seeded fields all over the Sacramento Valley for 30 years.		Children's Book - This one is also in the works. Parts of it have been drafted and the illustrations, which I may do myself, are currently in the doodle phase.
	Racing Book - I'm currently researching this one, taking notes and writing pieces as I go, while the ideas are fresh and new.		Spreadsheet Applications for Materials Science - Based on what you can see in the SAMS section of this web site, it will contain many more exercises and tutorials.
	Materials Science - This one is for a non-technical audience, for people with a general interest in science. I envision it as being a primer for engineering students and a low stress walk through the field of materials science for everyone else.