My favorite Aviation Books

Saturday Review This fascinating, well-told autobiography is a complete refutation of the comfortable cliché that "man is master of his fate." As far as pilots are concerned, fate (or death) is a hunter who is constantly in pursuit of them....There is nothing depressing about Fate Is the Hunter. There is tension and suspense in it but there is great humor too. Happily, Ernest K. Gann never gets too technical for the layman to understand.

Bob Buck's autobiography is a thumbnail history of the air transport industry, which he's been a part of practically since its inception. The book skips most of Buck's personal life and focuses on airplanes. Buck relates his wide-eyed first flying experience at 16 with an enthusiasm normally relegated to the pages of romance novels. He quickly became a copilot and eventually a pilot for nascent Missouri airline TWA, until his retirment, seniority number 1, on the 747.

Born in England in 1902, Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. She spent her childhood playing with native Maruni children and apprenticing with her father as a trainer and breeder of racehorses. In the 1930s, she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

Best remembered as leader of the 1942 raid over Tokyo, Doolittle later commanded the U.S. 8th Air Force in England. After the war he was active in as an aerial-show "aerobat" and later as a test pilot. Air history buffs will appreciate the detailed comments on the technological advances stimulated by competition for the Bendix and other air-race trophies during the '20s and '30s, races in which Doolittle was a prominent participant. The book recalls vividly Doolittle's days as an aviation pioneer--and retells the exciting story of the Tokyo raid. The rest, mostly dealing with the general's top-level leadership during the remainder of the war, his successes in the business world after retiring from the Air Force and the reception of innumerable honors and awards, is less interesting.

An extraordinary, deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000 feet, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone.

Langewiesche's classic work on the art of flying was published in 1944. This book explains precisely what pilots do when they fly, just how they do it, and why. These basics are largely unchanging. The book applies to large airplanes and small, old airplanes and new, and is of interest not only to the learner but also to the accomplished pilot and instructor. Today, several excellent manuals offer the pilot accurate and valuable technical information. But Stick and Rudder remains the leading think-book on the art of flying.

Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley