The C-124 Globemaster—a U.S. military heavy-lift transport in service 1950 through 1974—barreling down a runway was an awesome sight. The aircraft’s four 3800 hp piston engines (the largest ever mass-produced), mounted on its 174-foot wingspan, could carry a 69,000-pound payload of tanks, artillery or other cargo, or 200 fully equipped troops, at more than 300 mph. The flight crew, perched three stories above the landing gears in an unpressurized cockpit, relied, like Magellan, on celestial fixes to navigate over oceans. With a world-wide mission delivering troops and materials to such destinations as the Congo, Vietnam, Thule, Greenland and Antarctica, the Globemaster lived up to its name and was foundational to what Time magazine publisher Henry Luce termed the “American Century.” Drawing on coast-to-coast visits to archives, Air Force bases, libraries and accident sites, and his own recollections as a navigator, the author details Cold War confrontations and consequent strategies that emerged after Douglas Aircraft Company delivered the first C-124A to the Military Air Transport Service in 1949.

(Little Rock: Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2009). Jim Bailey wrote in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that “Smith’s biography, exhaustively researched and comprehensively written, is a neat job – certain to stir nostalgia for Cardinal fans with long memories.” A reviewer of The Barling Darling wrote “With a heightened sociological imagination Higgins is able to locate the life of Hal Smith as an individual within the wider social context of mid 20th century America. The reader is treated to incisive detail as to how the unpredictable turns in the life of a nation impact the life of an individual. With a keen eye Higgins details Hal Smith not just as a solid baseball player but as someone who loved to play the game, and loved to play it with others. Clearly, what has given Hal Smith the measure of success he has had in life- on and off the diamond, is a collegiality that exudes warmth and confidence in those around him.”

Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004) tells the story of a man of African descent who defied generalizations about race as he served with distinction in the United States Army during and after the War of 1812. As a member of an elite rifle company, Peter Caulder helped establish Fort Smith in 1817. Following twelve years in the army, Caulder married Eliza Hall and the couple lived on their small farm for thirty years while raising their seven children as an integral part of a free black community nestled along the White River in Marion County. A Stranger and A Sojourner was the 2005 co-winner of the Ragsdale Award presented by the Arkansas Historical Society for the best book on Arkansas history.

Eastern National, 2007. This 72 page booklet narrates events and describes key people that transformed a remote and forested rendezvous point on the Arkansas River called Belle Point into a fort and then a bustling city on America’s mid-continental frontier. Color photographs, paintings, maps, and insets complement the text to bring the stirring past of a fascinating city into bold relief for the reader.