{"id":2525,"date":"2018-01-27T15:01:33","date_gmt":"2018-01-27T23:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2525"},"modified":"2018-01-27T15:01:33","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T23:01:33","slug":"review-terror-of-the-autumn-skies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2525","title":{"rendered":"Review: Terror of the Autumn Skies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fun fact: All pilots have a period of aviation that made us fall in love with the idea of flying, often before we ever have the opportunity to fly ourselves. For me, that&#8217;s World War I.\u00a0 I&#8217;m going to find something cool about any WWI aviation book including Blaine Pardoe&#8217;s <em>Terror of the Autumn Skies<\/em>.\u00a0 My bias aside, Pardoe&#8217;s subject, Frank Luke, is well worth knowing about.<\/p>\n<p>Luke&#8217;s a remarkable character whose story I hadn&#8217;t heard.\u00a0 His credentials are impeccable: briefly US Ace of Aces, multiply decorated including the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Medal_of_Honor\">Medal of Honor<\/a>, and arguably America&#8217;s most accomplished <a href=\"http:\/\/dc.wikia.com\/wiki\/Steven_Savage_(New_Earth)\">balloon buster<\/a> in WWI.\u00a0 Luke was a larger-than-life character who anyone who has seen a popular film with fighter pilots in it will recognize.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a westerner (Arizona) who shows up in his squadron boasting and irritating his flight mates.\u00a0 Though he backs that up &#8211; on one occasion <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Babe_Ruth%27s_called_shot\">calling his shot on a distant observation balloon a la Babe Ruth<\/a> &#8211; he frequently disobeys orders and is continually at odds with his commanding officer.\u00a0 He forms a tight bond with a fellow outsider with a complementary personality who becomes his wingman.\u00a0 His life of outlandish risk and selfless bravery ends in a hail of wartime bullets.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a great story, and Pardoe&#8217;s research in telling it is exemplary.\u00a0 He hunts down military records, personal letters, and contemporary news accounts and interprets them all well.\u00a0 He makes a clear story of these fragments.<\/p>\n<p>The writing is a little episodic and has spots where a bit more editing would help.\u00a0 Overall, I&#8217;d call it solid if not inspiring.\u00a0 Interested readers will find an interesting story here, though it may not draw outsiders in.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fun fact: All pilots have a period of aviation that made us fall in love with the idea of flying, often before we ever have the opportunity to fly ourselves. For me, that&#8217;s World War I.\u00a0 I&#8217;m going to find something cool about any WWI aviation book including Blaine Pardoe&#8217;s Terror of the Autumn Skies.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2525"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2529,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions\/2529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}