The Adventures and Misadventures of Ace the Pilot chronicles the deeds done right and deeds done wrong that the featured pilots lived through with sheer luck and by the grace of God. The stories included in this collection are trueat least as true as you can expect from pilots who are not reliable sources So Ace the pilot will take some of the blame and all the credit for these stories. Author Butch Childers was a pilot for over eighteen years. Some of the tales are about him; some are about pilots he had the pleasure, or in some cases, the displeasure of sharing a flight or two with over the years. From First Ride in a Chopper to Ducks in the Flap, this collection of stories provides an inside look at the ups and downs of being a pilot, private or commercial. Whether you are a pilot or not, these stories are bound to pique the interest of anyone who has an interest in flying. This realistic collection of stories will resonate with pilots and civilians alike.

Ace McCool is an over-the-top spoof of the airline industry. It relates the hilarious misadventures of a fly-by-night, corner-cutting airline called Down East International, based in Moncton, New Brunswick. The stories start with Ace McCool, a World War II pilot, and the rag-tag characters he picks up along the way as his airline progresses from DC-3s to a Boeing 727 over the years from just after the war to 1985. Dim-witted pilot Pete Braddock "who could have flown the crate the airplane came in." The Smarts, an insufferable Englishman but "a polemaster of the first water." Churchy Laflamme, "de bes' co-pilot of dem all." Cowboy McCloskey, a big Albertan dinosaur with oil wells on his ranch. He commutes to Moncton in a privately-owned CF-104. Red Starr, a hippie pilot and, on the side, lead of a rock group called Red Starr and the Commies. Those pilots and a few more, as well as stewardesses (as they were called) Mile-High Millie, Crazy Iris and Stew Jane, and a few other characters stumble their way from one impossible situation to another. These are the same stories that brought laughter to readers of Canadian Aviation magazine. They are assembled together in book form. Come fly and laugh with Ace McCool of Down East International.

Maqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout) is one of the most alluring and memorable characters in the fiction of the last twenty-five years. His extravagant and hopeless undertakings, his brushes with the law and scrapes with death, and his enduring friendships and unlooked-for love affairs make him a Don Quixote for our day, driven from one place to another by a restless and irregular quest for the absolute. Álvaro Mutis's seven dazzling chronicles of the adventures and misadventures of Maqroll have won him numerous honors and a passionately devoted readership throughout the world. Here for the first time in English all these wonderful stories appear in a single volume in Edith Grossman's prize-winning translation.

Readers of Flying the Alaska Wild marveled at Mort Mason’s true tales of braving the elements at the extremes in a Piper Super Cub. But the bush pilot, adventurer, and raconteur was just beginning, and in this book he revisits his most memorable moments of flying by the seat of his pants through blizzards and white-outs, on assignments at times hazardous and sometimes simply whacky, always with a sense of humor and due respect for the limitless wilds of Alaska beneath his wings. The world of a bush pilot really is the final frontier, and for thirty years Mort Mason was there, clocking enough heart-stopping miles to make most life-stories utterly incredible. In The Alaska Bush Pilot Chronicles Mason recounts more of his unlikely adventures in the face of Alaska’s unforgiving weather and terrain. His stories gives readers the rare chance to experience the disappearing thrills and challenges of meeting the American frontier on its own unyielding terms.

Fighter Pilot is the memoir of legendary ace American fighter pilot and general officer in the U.S. Air Force, Robin Olds. Robin Olds was a larger-than-life hero with a towering personality. A graduate of West Point and an inductee in the National College Football Hall of Fame for his All-American performance for Army, Olds was one of the toughest college football players at the time. In WWII, Olds quickly became a top fighter pilot and squadron commander by the age of 22—and an ace with 12 aerial victories. But it was in Vietnam where the man became a legend. He arrived in 1966 to find a dejected group of pilots and motivated them by placing himself on the flight schedule under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them. Proving he wasn't a WWII retread, he led the wing with aggressiveness, scoring another four confirmed kills, becoming a rare triple ace. Olds, who retired a brigadier general and died in 2007, was a unique individual whose personal story presents one of the most eagerly anticipated military books in recent memory. Please note: This ebook edition does not include the photo insert from the print edition.

Between April and July 1944, Truman Smith Flew thirty-five bombing missions over France and Germany. He was only twenty years old. Although barely adults, Smith and his peers worried about cramming a lifetime’s worth of experience into every free night, each knowing he probably would not survive the next bombing mission. Written with blunt honesty, wry humor, and insight, The Wrong Stuff is Smith’s gripping memoir of that time. In a new preface, the author comments with equal honesty and humor on the impact this book has had on his life.

During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were high. Of the roughly 125,000 who served as aircrew with Bomber Command, 59,423 were killed or missing and presumed killed—a fatality rate of 45.5%. With odds like that, it would be no surprise if there were as few atheists in cockpits as there were in foxholes; and indeed, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in Flying against Fate, a pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II. Mining a wealth of documents as well as a trove of published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, MacKenzie examines the myriad forms combat fliers' superstitions assumed, from jinxes to premonitions. Most commonly, airmen carried amulets or talismans—lucky boots or a stuffed toy; a coin whose year numbers added up to thirteen; counterintuitively, a boomerang. Some performed rituals or avoided other acts, e.g., having a photo taken before a flight. Whatever seemed to work was worth sticking with, and a heightened risk often meant an upsurge in superstitious thought and behavior. MacKenzie delves into behavior analysis studies to help explain the psychology behind much of the behavior he documents—not slighting the large cohort of crew members and commanders who demurred. He also looks into the ways in which superstitious behavior was tolerated or even encouraged by those in command who saw it as a means of buttressing morale. The first in-depth exploration of just how varied and deeply felt superstitious beliefs were to tens of thousands of combat fliers, Flying against Fate expands our understanding of a major aspect of the psychology of war in the air and of World War II.

From a Hall of Fame pitcher to a U.S. president, learn what an incredible impact World War I made on young men and women When it started, many thought the Great War would be a great adventure. Yet as those who saw it up close learned, it was anything but. In the Fields and the Trenches traces the stories of 18 young idealists swept into the brutal conflict, many of whom would go on to become well-known 20th-century figures in film, science, politics, literature, and business. Writer J. R. R. Tolkien was a signals officer with the British Expeditionary Force and fought at the Battle of the Somme. Scientist Irène Curie helped her mother Marie run 20 French field hospitals. Actor Buster Keaton left Hollywood after being drafted into the army's 40th Infantry Division. And all four of Theodore Roosevelt's sons fought in Europe, though one did not return. With World War I as a backdrop, readers will encounter heroes, cowards, comics, and villains who participated in this life-changing event. Author Kerrie Logan Hollihan uses extensive original material, from letters sent from the frontlines to personal journals, to bring these men and women back to life. And though their stories are a century old, they convey modern, universal themes of love, death, power, greed, courage, hate, fear, family, friendship, and sacrifice.

" From breaking wild horses in Colorado to fighting the Red Baron's squadrons in the skies over France, here in his own words is the true story of a forgotten American hero: the cowboy who became our first ace and the first pilot to fly the American colors over enemy lines.Growing up on a ranch in Sterling, Colorado, Frederick Libby mastered the cowboy arts of roping, punching cattle, and taming horses. Once he even roped an antelope. As a young man he exercised his skills in the mountains and on the ranges of Arizona and New Mexico as well as the Colorado prairie. When World War I broke out, he found himself in Calgary, Alberta, and joined the Canadian army. In France, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an "observer," the gunner in a two-person biplane. Libby shot down an enemy plane on his first day in battle over the Somme, which was also the first day he flew in a plane or fired a machine gun. He went on to become a pilot. He fought against the legendary German aces Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen. He became the first American to down five enemy planes and won the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in action. When the United States entered the war, he became the first person to fly the American colors over German lines. Libby achieved the rank of captain before he transferred back to the United States at the behest of another aviation legend, then-colonel Billy Mitchell. Written in 1961 and never before published, Horses Don't Fly is a rare piece of Americana. Libby's memoir of his cowboy days in the last years of the Old West will remind readers of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy-but it's the real thing. His description of World War I combines a rattling good account of the air war over France with captivating and sometimes poignant depictions of wartime London, the sorrow for friends lost in combat, and the courage and camaraderie of the Royal Flying Corps. Told in a modest, self-deprecating, and often humorous voice in a pure American vernacular, Horses Don't Fly is, as Winston Groom notes in his introduction, "not only an important piece of previously unpublished history [but] a gripping and uplifting story to read."