Echoes of Eagles: A Son's Search for His Father and the Legacy of America's First Fighter Pilots

Rating:
Summary: Like sitting down to talk with the past
Review: I wasn't sure about reading this book--too often books about ancestors focus too much on the family, too little on the historical events with which the family was involved. But this one is a pleasant surprise. Only one short chapter about family background, then much information from interviews with men the elder Woolley served with, but not focused on him in particular. It's informative and interesting and personable. I found new insights into the state of mind of men facing death daily, often before ever encountering the enemy, thanks to unreliable aircraft. I felt almost as though I were talking to some of those veterans myself, which is high praise for the writing style.
One quibble. On page 253, Amelia Earhart is said to be "originally from the Boston area." She may have been from Boston later in life, but originally, she was a Kansas girl!

Rating:
Summary: Superb history, very personal
Review: This is like "Flags of Our Fathers" goes airborne. It's all about the author's quest to understand his father's wartime experience, which here involved not raising a flag on Iwo Jima, but serving in the 95th and 49th Aero Squadrons and flying Nieuports and Spads against Germany's best.

The cultural context is intriguing here, because the war that Woolley Senior knew was fought by rich people, upperclass scions like Sumner Sewell or Quentin Roosevelt, Andover preppies who volunteered for aviation and thereby went on a sort of outward bound-like adventure in the clouds. Mr. Woolley captures this romance well and shows his winning affection for his father through this detailed, intimate storytelling. I was very taken with this reach back through the generations.

This book is for anyone who's interested in either WWI fliers, or where our current generation of pilots gets their heritage (nice drawing of an F-15 Eagle on the cover is a signal that the publisher thinks that's part of the market for the book----they're probably right).

A great read -- recommended highly.