Ric’s Picks



If you enjoy good writing and good film-making like I do, you might enjoy these books and films that I have found worthwhile. By special arrangement with amazon.com, if you buy the book or film via the link from this page, you won’t pay an extra penny but TIGHAR gets a tidy little commission. It’s a great way to pick up that book or film you’ve always meant to add to your collection and make a contribution to TIGHAR at the same time. But you have to make the purchase via the link on this page.
	The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh Scribner’s Sons, 1953 Ric’s Review The story of the single most influential flight in aviation history in the words of the man who made it. A must for any aviation library.	West With the Night Beryl Markham North Point Press, 1982 (first published in 1942) Ric’s Review Perhaps the best-written book in the pantheon of aviation titles. In September 1936 Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly the Atlantic the hard way (East to West) and the first person to fly non-stop from England to North America. West With the Night is not only the story of that flight but also an autobiography of her early years in Africa as a horse trainer and bush pilot.
	Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann Simon & Schuster, 1961 Ric’s Review My favorite aviation book, period. Gann is a master story-teller who puts the reader beside him in the cockpit on the semi-autobiographical odyssey of his career as a professional pilot. His accounts of ice and thunderstorms in DC-2s and -3s over pre-war America and adventures as a wartime Air Transport Command pilot plying his trade from Goose Bay to The Hump are not told as “there I was” hangar-flying tales. Fate Is the Hunter captures gut feelings that will ring all too familiar with anyone who has lived a life aloft.	Finding Amelia by Ric Gillespie Naval Institute Press, 2006 Ric’s Review More than fifty books have been written offering various solutions to the Amelia Earhart mystery. This book is not one of them. This is a history book – the first accurate history of Amelia Earhart’s world flight, her disappearance, and the U.S. Navy search that failed to find her. You can’t solve a mystery unless you know the facts of the case. Finding Amelia is meticulously documented, yet entertaining and readable – so they tell me.
	Amelia Earhart’s Shoes: Is the Mystery Solved? by Thomas F. King, Randall S. Jacobson, Karen Ramey Burns, Kenton Spading AltaMira Press, 2004 Ric’s Review An excellent narrative of TIGHAR’s Earhart Project from its inception in 1988 up through the 2003 expedition. Principal author TIGHAR Senior Archaeologist Dr. Tom King follows the twisting path of hope, disappointment, and discovery through eight expeditions and proves the truth of the old TIGHAR adage “Adventure is what happens when things go wrong.”	The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Mary Lovell St. Martin’s Press, 1989 Ric’s Review The best of the many Earhart biographies, not only because it is well-written and reasonably well documented, but because it is also a biography of George Putnam, the indispensable other half of a talented team. Lovell lapses from scholarship into speculation when she deals with the disappearance. The book was published just as TIGHAR’s investigation was getting started. At that time the controversy over Earhart’s fate was between the sensational Captured-by-the-Japanese Theory and the more intuitive Crashed & Sank explanation. In the absence of real evidence to support either theory Lovell went for Crashed & Sank.
	Amelia Earhart – Image and Icon Edited by Kristen Lubben and Erin Barnett International Center of Photography, New York, 2007 Ric’s Review This large format (coffee-table) picture book contributes to a new understanding of who America's most famous woman pilot really was. The book catalogs and explains photographs that trace Earhart’s image from publicity shots staged for the 1928 “Friendship” flight to photos used in present day advertising. Kristen Lubben’s essay “Fame, Flight, and the New Woman” places Amelia in the context of her time and presents an intelligent discussion of how her image was manipulated to promote her celebrity.
	The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alperovitz Vintage Books, 1996 Review Coming Soon.	The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818 – 1909 by Pierre Berton Lyons Press, 1989; reprinted 2000 Review Coming Soon.
	The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941 – 1945 by Michael Beschloss Simon & Schuster, 2003 Review Coming Soon.	The Stars at Noon by Jacqueline Cochran Ayer Co. Pub., 1979 Review Coming Soon.
	The Bishop’s Boys by Tom Crouch W.W. Norton & Co., 1989 Review Coming Soon.	Bomber by Len Deighton HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd 1978 Review Coming Soon.
	Fighter by Len Deighton Grafton Books, 1979 Review Coming Soon.	Flying Tigers by Daniel Ford Harper Collin/Smithsonian Press; rev. edition 2007 Review Coming Soon.
	The Red Knight of Germany by Floyd Gibbons Kessinger Publishing, LLC, reprinted 2003 Review Coming Soon.	Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Belknap Press, 2006 Review Coming Soon.
	An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay by Martin Harwit, formerly Director, National Air & Space Museum. Springer, 1996 Review Coming Soon.	Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective by Thomas F. King, Ph.D. Left Coast Press, 2005 Review Coming Soon.
	Jean Batten, The Garbo of the Skies Ian Mackersey Time Warner Books, 1991 Review Coming Soon.	Autobiography of Values by Charles Lindbergh Harvest Books, 1992 Review Coming Soon.
	The Lafayette Escadrille Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr. Smithmark Publishers, reprinted 1995 Review Coming Soon.	At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange Penguin, 1982 Review Coming Soon.
	Doolittle Lowell Thomas & Edward Jablonski Doubleday, 1976 Review Coming Soon.

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