[Troubleshooter]

Harry Turtledove, alternative historian extrordinaire. The "World War' series was awesome. Imagine the middle of WWII aliens show up. His characterizations are incredible, you feel like you're standing in the same room as Churchill, Roosevelt and all of the rest.

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Barry Sadler. mercenary, singer, writer. He has an action series about a mixed historical figure. He combined the concept of the wandering jew with the legionnaire who stabbed Jesus in the side. "Content as you are now, so shall you remain until I return." Or something ot that effect. As a mercenary he could really bring the battles to life.

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John Steakly, one shot wonder. Armor is a great book.

"It was then, for Felix, it began. The hatred for the briefing officer had expanded to include his superiors, the captain of the ship, the commanders of Fleet itself, and finally the thick-headed idiot humans who had undertaken something as asinine as interplanetary war in the first place. The hatred blazed brightly, then vanished. From somewhere inside came a shock of all-consuming rage, the nova-like intensity of which startled even him. But then the rage was gone, too. It seemed to shoot away like a comet. What replaced the loathing and fury was something very different, something cold and distant and . . . only impersonally attentive. It was an odd being which rose from Felix and through him. It was, in fact, a remarkable creature. It was a wartime creature and a surviving creature. A killing creature.

The Engine, Felix thought. It's not me. It's my Engine. It will work when I cannot. It will examine and determine and choose and, at last, act. It will do all this while I cower inside."

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Robert Jordan, with the now colloquialized "Whale of Time" series

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Michael Shermer. "Why People Believe Weird Things", and he has a new one out called "The Science of Good and Evil" which I am looking forward to.

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More to come...