Jared's review

Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come out of World War I
by Eddie V. Captain Rickenbacker

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/253435.Fighting_the_Flying_Circus_The_Greatest_True_Air_Adventure_to_Come_out_of_World_War_I?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come out of World War I" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173162211m/253435.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/253435.Fighting_the_Flying_Circus_The_Greatest_True_Air_Adventure_to_Come_out_of_World_War_I?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come out of World War I</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/148038.Eddie_V_Captain_Rickenbacker">Eddie V. Captain Rickenbacker</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7987313?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is 80 percent rubbish. But there are some interesting bits in the other twenty percent.
 
 I read this on a whim. I had a copy of it on my shelf that I had bought (or maybe my mom had bought for me) many years ago through some kind of mail-order offer from Time-Life. I've long had an on-again-off-again interest in the history of flight. Inspired by a recent trip to the unique and wonderful <a target="_blank" href="http://oldrhinebeck.org">Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome</a>, I wanted to read a bit more about WWI aviation, so when I realized that I had a copy of this book I thought I'd give it a read. I didn't know what to expect, but I soon found out.
 
 By rubbish, I mean that this book is a hastily-written war memoir, published immediately after the war, full of rah-rah enthusiasm for the fight and sensational accounts of his daring escapades. Rickenbacker was the most successful American fighter pilot of the war, and something of a national hero, so I bet the book sold well in 1919. He was about twenty-nine when the events in the book took place, and thirty when it was published. It's not badly written, in the sense of being unpleasant to read, but it lacks almost all substance and polish, so I'd say it probably wasn't ghostwritten. Nonetheless, it reads as if the author wrote the book by simply copying over every significant flight report from his flying log, and padding them with detail. The result is a string of anecdotes that appear even to a knowledgeable and interested reader like myself to be indistinguishable, in the end almost boring. 
 
 The book covers the period from February to November of 1918, during which the author was in almost constant action in France, flying fighter planes against the opposing German forces. During this time he flew hundreds of missions, survived scores of aerial combats, killed dozens of German pilots or destroyed their airplanes in midair, and rose from a novice pilot to command a squadron of two dozen pilots and several hundred supporting staff.
 
 (to be continued)
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/563704?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Jared's review
rating:

recommended for: People interested in aviation or WWI military history
status: Read in October, 2007

This book is 80 percent rubbish. But there are some interesting bits in the other twenty percent.

I read this on a whim. I had a copy of it on my shelf that I had bought (or maybe my mom had bought for me) many years ago through some kind of mail-order offer from Time-Life. I've long had an on-again-off-again interest in the history of flight. Inspired by a recent trip to the unique and wonderful Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, I wanted to read a bit more about WWI aviation, so when I realized that I had a copy of this book I thought I'd give it a read. I didn't know what to expect, but I soon found out.

By rubbish, I mean that this book is a hastily-written war memoir, published immediately after the war, full of rah-rah enthusiasm for the fight and sensational accounts of his daring escapades. Rickenbacker was the most successful American fighter pilot of the war, and something of a national hero, so I bet the book sold well in 191...more

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message 1: by Todd

06/27/2008 11:45PM

It's funny, I was just thinking about Eddie Rickenbacker. I had mentioned him at trivia one night a few weeks ago and no one knew who I was talking about.