Enduring Courage--Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed

March 3, 2014
This biography of a legendary WWI combat ace explores a career spent courting danger at the frontiers of technical invention. Raised in poverty, Rickenbacker matured early into a driven man with a “preternatural quickness” for acquiring mechanical engineering skills in the custom car workshops of 1900’s Columbus, Ohio. He soon used this mechanical aptitude, along with an “abundance of moxie,” to master the new sport of motorcar racing. Graduating to the theater of WWI, he enters the “race to ace,” gaining a reputation as a fighter pilot and mounting the kill record of a “precisely murderous” pilot, whose raw skill and intuition in the cockpit earned him military advancement at war and celebrity treatment at home. Former Smithsonian magazine editor Ross has a knack for exciting, visual narrative, and the life-defining moments of race and dogfight are made particularly visceral through inclusion of technical details that enrich the drama. Though lacking much exploration of Rickenbacker’s later life—the treatment of his longer civilian life primarily revolves around an unbelievable survival adrift at sea—this is a highly entertaining, if incomplete, portrait, which reveres its subject as a hero defined by his high-speed feats. Maps and photos.

May 1, 2014
Energetic look at the World War I ace's early exploits through the prism of exciting modern changes in America.In his passionately sympathetic biography, Ross (War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier, 2009, etc.) finds in Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973) a subject as brash, unassuming and heroic as the young American nation at the turn of the 20th century. The author admires the fact that the son of poor, German-speaking Swiss immigrants had so much going against him in the early years and overcame the obstacles through sheer hard work and determination. Luck, another quintessential American ingredient, favored him, as well as the ability to fudge the record when necessary, such as he did about the events surrounding the death of his belligerent father in 1904 after picking a fight with another laborer. At 13, Rickenbacker quit school and went to work, becoming head of the household and breadwinner. A natural leader, Rickenbacker adored mechanical tinkering and invention and parlayed his work in a machine shop into becoming "mechanician" at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company, racing state-of-the-art Frayer-Millers. "Engines have always talked to me," he asserted, demonstrating his nearly "mystical" ways with them as he began proving himself a winner in races throughout the country. With the United States propelled into the European war in 1917, Rickenbacker talked his way past bigotry against German-Americans, his lack of a gentlemanly education and an eye injury and began flying lessons at Tours Aerodrome, essentially teaching himself in the fragile, unreliable Nieuports that the Germans outclassed in their mightier Albatroses. Aerial dogfights provided plenty of sobering danger and led to the deaths of many of his closest colleagues. In a few short months, Rickenbacker, with 26 kills, was a national hero.Ross sweeps readers along in Rickenbacker's thrilling tale.

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Starred review from April 1, 2014
Once upon a time, aviator Eddie Rickenbacker was the most famous man in America, the kind of hero that songs were written about and schoolchildren dreamed of emulating. In this entertaining biography, historian Ross (War on the Run, 2009) returns to the dawn of the twentieth century, when cars and aircraft burst onto the scene. Aviation aficionados and war buffs will expect Ross to focus on Rickenbacker's WWI flying-ace achievements; instead, he takes a long look at the aviator's early success in the automotive field as both a brilliant mechanic ( Put simply, engines have always talked to me, Rickenbacker explained) and a daring race-car driver. Drawing heavily on his subject's interviews and writings, while also noting areas of his personal life that Rickenbacker publicly fabricated (most notably his father's life and death), Ross peppers the text with quotes that place readers right alongside the ace through nearly every moment of his life. Obviously this is exciting material to work withafter all, Rickenbacker was a man who drove in the first Indy 500 and dueled with the Red Baron's flying circusbut Ross is never fawning in this thoroughly enjoyable and downright rollicking read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2013

The executive editor of American Heritage offers a thorough biography of the World War II flying ace.

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