The Power Curve
If you're familiar with the power-curve, you are citing it and the oft-quoted "backside of the power curve" in your acceleration example.
It sounds like L/D max coincided with about M0.74 or 0.75 and some indicated speed (the true L/D relationship requires both IAS and Mach; the Mach portion can be ignored at low mach numbers but becomes much more apparent at high-altitude). Therefore, it is actually draggier below 0.74---and takes longer to accelerate---from .70 to .77 than .77 to .82.
The backside of the curve gets very steep, very quickly...much more so than the front-side of the curve, until you start getting close to the critical Mach number...then it, too, gets very steep, very fast.
The high-speed chapter of your new book should explain this in layman's terms. Cubdriver's engineering texts would require linear equations and Laplace transforms, which made even my head hurt 25 years ago!