100 books like Bell X-1

This book describes the very beginning of experimental flights at the Muroc Bombing and Gunnery Range. When the U.S. entered WWII, it began looking for an isolated location to conduct flight testing of Top-Secret aircraft. Muroc provided the ideal location for cutting-edge flight research on the turbojet revolution. 

After the end of the War in 1946, however, a new type of research activity designed to explore the most challenging unknowns of flight began. This was the dawn of the “X-Planes.” Today, this place is called Edwards Air Force Base.

This book is written by someone who really knows the program and the Mach 3 airplane. Milton O. Thompson, a pilot active in the X-15 program from beginning to end, tells the dramatic story of one of the most successful research aircraft ever flown. I personally have met three of the 12 X-15 pilots: Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle (both from my NASA days), and Scott Crossfield, whom I met at an Experimental Aircraft Association meeting.

The book not only describes the aircraft, the flights, and the pilots but the NACA Langley Research Center’s wind tunnel work on aerodynamic heating and transfer, stability and control, and hypersonic turbulent boundary layer data for aircraft performance.

The book starts with the second flight; he has already broken the sound barrier. His writing style grabs you. After his WW II experiences, he knows that he is in a very dangerous business: that of a test pilot. In 1953, he flew a Russian MiG that had fallen into U.S. hands, being the first American to do so. That December, he set a new speed record, pushing past Mach 2 in a Bell X-1A. 

Every pilot knows about this national hero. This book also describes his many commands and his role in training the astronauts as head of the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School. At 89, he flew past Mach 1 again to celebrate the 65th Anniversary of his breaking the sound barrier

The concept for this aircraft was born from General Curtis LeMay’s desire for a heavy bomber with the weapon load and range of the subsonic B-52 and a top speed in excess of the supersonic medium bomber, the B-58 Hustler. I once met General LeMay in the Mercury Control Center in 1962. 

However, in April 1961, Defense Secretary McNamara stopped the production of the XB-70 due to rapid cost escalation and the USSR’s newfound ability to destroy aircraft at extremely high altitudes with missiles or the new Mig-25 fighter. The XB-70 became famous for its breakthrough technology and the spectacular images captured when an observing Starfighter collided with the Valkyrie, which crashed into the Mojave Desert.

It seems incomprehensible that I didn’t read this book until my test pilot husband died. He’d applied to NASA, just before the plane crash.

This book is popular in the aviation community because Tom Wolfe nailed it—the pilot lingo, the tall tales from the cockpit, the egos, the spot-on descriptions, and mostly, the brilliance and love of adventure. I’ve spent most of my life around pilots (I’m a licensed private pilot) and Wolfe gets it. He is an extremely talented writer who helped bring Chuck Yeager’s ultra-cool bravery into the mainstream. Wolfe traces the successes and horrific failures of the early NASA program, weaving characters together in a way that is more action fiction than true life. This book will change the way you look at airplanes and the people who fly them. 

My late husband was buried with his tattered copy of The Right Stuff.

Kristóf (1935-2011) was a Hungarian writer who fled to Switzerland during the war and wrote in French.

The Notebook (the first in the trilogy) is currently number one on my list of all-time favourites. It has all the elements of storytelling that I love: deep, psychological insight into the human heart; adroit use of archetypes, which give the book a timeless, folkloric feel; concision (no waffling) and a poetic, pared-back language that creates a sense of startling immediacy.

Kristóf writes about World War II through the eyes of two young brothers in a Nazi-occupied country (unnamed), and she shocks us awake not through sensationalised violence but through matter-of-fact narration.

It reads like a cross-between dramatic monologue and biblical parable – she stretches the novel form and opens up new possibilities for writing. 

Pound-for-pound, this is perhaps the best military aviation book on the market today.  During the darkest days of World War II, A Higher Call tells the story of a seemingly-improbable act of gallantry in the skies over Europe.  A wounded and hardly-airworthy B-17 limps through the sky near the conclusion of its first mission. It is soon tailed by a Bf-109, the Luftwaffe’s deadliest fighter. The Messerschmitt pilot could end the B-17 crewmen’s lives with the pull of a trigger.  But what happens next will shock the reader.  

Ariel Lawhon is one of my favorite authors. I will read anything she writes, and this novel is one of her best. Not many people have heard of Nancy Wake, but she was an Australian expatriate living in Paris during the years preceding World War II. I, for one, am glad she’s finally getting her due, for her story is one of those “I can hardly believe this really happened” tales. Nancy Wake started out as a reporter, but when Germany invaded France she joined the Resistance and smuggled people and documents across the border. The Nazis nicknamed her “The White Mouse” and put a bounty on her head, forcing her to flee France. Any ordinary person would have called it a day. But not Nancy Wake. She returned to France as Hélène under the aegis of England’s Special Operations Executives. Her cleverness and courage are guaranteed to thrill… show more.

Born in 1934 in Berchtesgaden, in the shadow of Hitler’s Eagles Nest, Irmgard Hunt witnessed the growth of fascist ideology among the people she loved during an otherwise idyllic childhood. As the shadow of World War II fell over the mountain, however, Hunt began to question and then disavow the Nazi doctrines she had accepted as a young child. As time went on and the regime crumbled literally before her eyes, she was vocal in confronting her country’s criminal past and in championing the democratic principles her elders had so easily dismissed.

Technically about World War II, this work covers Chim’s work depicting culture, politics, and life before and after the war, so the circumstances leading to conflict and its aftermath. Chim was the co-founder of Magnum Photos, so his contribution to photojournalism is immense, and his photos are beautifully lit and composed even as they capture fleeting moments: Polish school children waiting for a bus in the rain, a baby reaching for bread at a displaced person’s camp or a boy playing in the ruins of a bombed building. The book also includes later photos of celebrities and movie stars, which, when seen alongside his earlier work creates an interesting narrative of a world putting itself back together and once again seeking out joy and beauty.