Rating: 
Summary: Background facts about the writing of the story
Review: The story was originally a cross country flight across the United States, but somehow it just didn't work. When Reserve Lt. Bach's Air Guard squadron was called up and sent to patrol the airways along the newly-constructed Berlin Wall, the story was rewritten in a bachelor officers' quarters in Chaumont, France. It was a breakthrough story of its time, far more honest a representation of jet fighter flying than you saw in the movies, where the pilots always had their visors up, so you could see the actor's eyes!
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting allegory
Review: This book is a very haunting allegory about Richard Bach's ordeal with his own mortality. Deals with facing death, the great unknown, and all the fears and anxieties that go along with topics we prefer not to think about. Reading it will open your heart and touch your soul, and stay with you long after the book is finished.
Arlene Millman
author of BOOMERANG - A MIRACLE TRILOGY
Rating:
Summary: Haunting allegory
Review: This book is a very haunting allegory about Richard Bach's ordeal with his own mortality. Deals with facing death, the great unknown, and all the fears and anxieties that go along with topics we prefer not to think about. Reading it will open your heart and touch your soul, and stay with you long after the book is finished.
Arlene Millman
author of BOOMERANG - A MIRACLE TRILOGY
Rating:
Summary: The quintessential look at flying fighter aircraft
Review: This is "The Right Stuff" before Thomas Wolfe ever had the idea. Told through the eyes of a pilot flying an F-84 across Europe, the book is a gripping treatise on one man's love of flight. From detailed stories of dropping practice bombs on the range, to gripping tales of flying through thunderstorms, to the unique bond that develops between man and inanimate machine, Bach tells the story as only someone who has lived the life can. A timeless look inside the life of a fighter pilot, and an engaging look through the unique prism that Richard Bach brings to flying
Rating: 
Summary: Flying, not Levitation
Review: This is one of the best "anorack books" ever written, a descriptive masterpiece of what its like to fly a fighter bomber alone on a cold night. Its obsessively detailed, and its the detail that gives the account its power.Richard Bach's much vaunted 'philosophy' is almost totally absent; instead we have the musings of a lonely, thoughtful, slightly anxious young man who may have to go to war in a few weeks. For its time (around the Cuban missile crisis?) its an astonishingly mature, liberal persective on his present and the future. Indeed, one wonders how well 2nd Lt Bach, a part-time Air Guard pilot, fitted into the professional military. By the 1970s much of Bach's work had become pretentious and shallow, the flying had been replaced by levitation and seagull parables. But as his first book, "Stranger to the Ground" is earnest, brave and painfully honest. If you like aircraft and flying, or like reading about them, this book is a must.
Rating:
Summary: Flying, not Levitation
Review: This is one of the best "anorack books" ever written, a descriptive masterpiece of what its like to fly a fighter bomber alone on a cold night. Its obsessively detailed, and its the detail that gives the account its power. Richard Bach's much vaunted 'philosophy' is almost totally absent; instead we have the musings of a lonely, thoughtful, slightly anxious young man who may have to go to war in a few weeks. For its time (around the Cuban missile crisis?) its an astonishingly mature, liberal persective on his present and the future. Indeed, one wonders how well 2nd Lt Bach, a part-time Air Guard pilot, fitted into the professional military. By the 1970s much of Bach's work had become pretentious and shallow, the flying had been replaced by levitation and seagull parables. But as his first book, "Stranger to the Ground" is earnest, brave and painfully honest. If you like aircraft and flying, or like reading about them, this book is a must.
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