Skies to Conquer: A Year Inside the Air Force Academy
Diana Jean Schemo covered the Air Force Academy's sexual assault scandal in 2003, one of a series of academy embarrassments that have included drug use, rape complaints, and charges of evangelical officers pushing Christianity on cadets of all faiths. Today, the institution is in flux—a fascinating time to look at the changes being made and the experience of today's cadets.
Schemo followed a handful of academy cadets through the school year. From the admissions process and punishing weeks of basic training to graduation, she shares the triumphs and tribulations of the cadets and the struggle of the academy's leaders to set their embattled alma mater on a straighter path.
- Follows cadets in all grades, with insights on day-to-day academy life and training
- Written by a veteran reporter, two-time foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize nominee, with excellent contacts at the academy
- Includes 38 black-and-white photographs
Like David Lipsky's successful Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, this book offers a fascinating window on the training of our military today. But Schemo's book updates the story: the seniors were the first class to sign up after the attacks of 9/11, and the road to graduation, this time, leads to an America at war.
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Book details
- Author
- Diana Jean Schemo
- Imprint
- Trade Paper Press, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Pages
- 320
- Formats
- Hardcover
- Subjects
- Biography & Autobiography › Military
- Topics
- military education · cadet life · sexual assault · evangelical Christianity · military journalism · U.S. Air Force
- ISBN-13
- 9780470046371
About the author
DIANA JEAN SCHEMO is a journalist and foreign correspondent with more than twenty-five years at the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun. She is the author of Skies to Conquer: A Year Inside the Air Force Academy.
Schemo was the first woman assigned overseas for the Baltimore Sun, heading its West European bureau in Paris and later Berlin, and served as the Times bureau chief in Rio de Janeiro from 1995 to 1999. The Times nominated her education coverage for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003, and she is a three-time winner of the New York Times Publisher’s Award. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College and a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism.
When she’s not writing, Schemo serves as co-founder and executive editor of 100Reporters and founder and co-director of Double Exposure, an investigative film festival and symposium.
Diana is based in Washington, D.C.