Contents
Bob Buck is the author of four previous books, including Weather Flying and The Pilot's Burden.
Walter J. Boyne, former director, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
An absolutely brilliant book by an aviation pioneer! Bob Buck's
beautiful writing style conveys his intimate and loving knowledge
of aviation, evoking the best of the past...while keeping us
solidly grounded in the present. Buck's memoirs put him in the
first rank of aviation writers with Ernie Gann and Charles
Lindbergh. Any airman will love this book, and any writer will envy
it.
Reeve Lindbergh North Star over My Shoulder provides the connection
between the very first pioneers, like my father, and the brave band
of young aviators who followed him. [Bob Buck] writes so eloquently
about his life and work....It's a wonderful story. A real delight
to read.
Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post [Buck] has written a strong,
vivid, and wholly engaging memoir of his flying life...a lively,
informative book that loses not a bit of its wonder and excitement
now that aviation has been transformed from science fiction into
everyday reality.
Walter J. Boyne, former director, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
An absolutely brilliant book by an aviation pioneer! Bob Buck's
beautiful writing style conveys his intimate and loving knowledge
of aviation, evoking the best of the past...while keeping us
solidly grounded in the present. Buck's memoirs put him in the
first rank of aviation writers with Ernie Gann and Charles
Lindbergh. Any airman will love this book, and any writer will envy
it.
Reeve Lindbergh North Star over My Shoulder provides the
connection between the very first pioneers, like my father, and the
brave band of young aviators who followed him. [Bob Buck] writes so
eloquently about his life and work....It's a wonderful story. A
real delight to read.
Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post [Buck] has written a
strong, vivid, and wholly engaging memoir of his flying life...a
lively, informative book that loses not a bit of its wonder and
excitement now that aviation has been transformed from science
fiction into everyday reality.
What's not to love about flying? For all the numbing routine, constant danger and bad food, Buck can't find much to complain about. He's been flying since the 1920s and still today, at age 87, takes the occasional glider for a spin. His 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. His descriptions of these early flights in bare-bones vehicles have a white-knuckle intensity, especially when the weather turns bad (one passage tells of the few options pilots had when dealing with ice forming on their windshields: opening a small window at 10,000 feet and scraping it off with a putty knife was one of them). During WWII, Buck flew a special weather-research B-17 around the world and after the war became one of the airline's most senior pilots. In the course of his life, he flies over most of the known world and meets fellow air aficionados Tyrone Power and Howard Hughes. Buck writes in an appealing, no-nonsense manner that only occasionally becomes labored the literary equivalent of one too many friendly punches in the shoulder but this is an exciting memoir from an endearingly obsessed man who has been just about everywhere and can't wait to tell how he got there, and in what kind of plane and at what altitude. (Apr. 11) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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