In the 1993 time-frame, after the end of the cold war, a group of disenfranchised former leaders of the Soviet Union seek to undermine the current Russian Federation power structure and embarrass the United States. Using Libyan President Moammar Khadaffi as their foil, they arrange for the covert transfer of 24 specially configured Soviet SU-27K fighters to a secret base in Southern Libya. The fighters are the entire inventory of carrier versions of the Sukhoi fighter with folding wings, tailhooks and super engines that had been intended for the first real Russian aircraft carrier, Tiblisi. The key figures in the intrigue are a Russian test pilot, Vladimir Chilin, the test pilot who conducted the carrier tests on the Tiblisi as well as the instructor who trains the Libyan special squadron; Abou Wattaz, the leading Libyan fighter pilot; Abou Nidal, the world's most deadly hitman and a U.S. Navy fighter aircrew from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. The climax of the story occurs in the air over the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya. The Navy aircrew, Commander Jay Blakeley and his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant Frank Brownley lead a flight of F-14s into a pitched aerial engagement with the entire special Libyan squadron. It is clash of high-technology fighters and aerial weapons in an action-packed engagement "furball", with devastating results for the Libyans. Vladimir Chilin, who is an airborne witness to the disaster, avoids an assassination attempt by his Libyan wingman and makes the difficult choice of defecting to the American aircraft carrier.

One of America's leading landscape architects, Peter Walker has created a variety of significant landscapes worldwide, including joint projects with architects I. M. Pei, Norman Foster, and Renzo Piano. Walker's broad field of practice includes urban design and planning and the creation of landscapes ranging in size from parks and university campuses to corporate headquarters, plazas, and private gardens. Peter Walker and Partners / Nasher Sculpture Center Garden focuses on his garden in Dallas, Texas, a set of "outdoor galleries" showcasing the Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. A museum without a roof, the garden, with its subtle balance of art and nature, is also a serene urban park, whose beauty perfectly complements Renzo Piano's design for the center. Peter Walker's informative sketches, drawings, and plans, along with photographs of the final design, reveal the delicate balance between art, culture, and context at the heart of the Nasher Foundation Sculpture Garden. Source Books in Landscape Architecture, produced in collaboration with the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, provide detailed documentation of important new projects.

The Evolution of the Nasher Collection is the catalog that accompanies the inaugural exhibition, on view from October 2, 2005, through May 21, 2006, at the new Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition draws from the collection of the museum's benefactor, Raymond D. Nasher, and his late wife, Patsy. The Nashers built one of the world's major collections of twentieth-century sculpture over the course of forty years. The exhibition includes seminal works by Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, David Smith, Henry Moore, and others. Before sculpture, the Nashers collected ancient American art, Guatemalan textiles, contemporary prints, and paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Many of these works, held in the Nashers' private residence, will be on public view--and published in this full-color catalog--for the first time. The book offers a new approach to viewing and thinking about the Nasher Collection, concentrating not on the final, finished product, "the greatest collection of modern sculpture in private hands," but on the unfolding of the process of building that collection through time, its chronological development from the early 1950s to the present. In the history of any collection, there is a narrative of evolution--a beginning, which includes a motivation, followed by a process of change as the collector works out by experience and experimentation a personal approach to the gathering of objects of art. In the case of the Nasher collection, this personal approach is the result of a remarkable synergy between two individuals, Raymond D. Nasher and Patsy Nasher. The essay by curator Sarah Schroth contextualizes the Nashers as collectors within the history of collecting practices in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Publication of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

When world-renowned architect Rafael Viñoly was commissioned to design a major new center for the arts at Duke University, he set about creating his first museum in North America and the first stand-alone museum in Duke’s eighty-year history. The resulting 65,000-square-foot building has changed the cultural landscape of the university and indeed the Southeast. This book documents the genesis and design of the new museum, which opened on October 2, 2005. The building is named in honor of the family of Raymond D. Nasher, an internationally prominent art collector who graduated from Duke in 1943. The landmark building takes its place among Viñoly’s other distinguished designs, including the new home for jazz at Lincoln Center in New York and expansion projects for the Cleveland Museum of Art, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in New York. Among his other cultural projects are the Tokyo International Forum and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. He is designing the new Tampa Museum of Art and a new museum in the city of Colchester, England. He was part of the team that created the runner-up design for the new World Trade Center site in New York City. The brilliant core of the Nasher at Duke is a 13,000-square-foot glass and steel canopy rising to a height of 45 feet above the central gallery space. The faceted roof soars above the irregular pentagonal great hall, where five concrete pavilions fan out at different angles. The pavilions will house three large gallery spaces, an auditorium, offices, university and community classrooms, a museum shop, and a café with outdoor seating overlooking a sculpture garden. Set in the forest on Duke’s campus, the museum’s full-height glass walls and green slate floor connect the pavilions and further blur the division between building and nature. With an essay by art historian Annabel Jane Wharton, a design statement by museum architect Rafael Viñoly, a foreword by museum namesake Raymond D. Nasher, and photos by Brad Feinknopf and Jerry Blow, this book documents the building that will become a cornerstone for cultural activities for the university and the public.