Customer Reviews

North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A wonderfully written book of an amazing life. From DC-2 to 747, it was a career spaning the greatest changes in civil aviation. A story that is now told by someone who was active in advancing the skill of airline flying and can make it very readable. The airline pilot autobiography is not a new idea - there have been some good ones and boat-loads of just OK ones - but this is the best I've read.

A pilot's pilot (Captain Buck flew the line, did research and wrote some best-selling classic pilot education books) who can make the flight through the decades come alive. Imagine sitting down with an old man at a small airport who still pilots gliders and he turns out to be a storyteller of great wit and charm, a man who still remembers when crossing the Atlantic was a battle, who was there when airline flying advanced from shaky pistons to huge jets. Who would not want to relax in the sun, watch the airplanes, and listen to the wonders of TWA unfold. In the tradition of St. Exupery, Ernest Gann and Len Morgan. And yes, I liked it.

Bob Buck is now a Legend in the flying field. His own books have seen to that, but this doesn't detract from the fact that he should be legendary. But there is something about legendary flyers that is often missed. Those of us who were around them didn't know they were legends, and neither did they.

In my own flying career which started after Buck's but paralleled his last quarter of a century, the critical period he himself identifies as the high water mark of flight development, I was aware of only one true legend: Lindbergh. Buck has a high opinion of him from a couple of meetings with him, and forgets or forgives his leather-headed period during his America First days before WWII when anyone with an iota of sense knew that America would have to get into the fight against the dictators and their bloody regimes. Lindbergh didn't think so. That position lined him up with those we damned and hated around our supper table in the late 1930's, the Isolationists who kept us out of the War until it was almost too little too late. Thus, the one time I met Lindbergh, I thought, "No doubt you're a great aviator, but you're actually a jerk about some things." So much for legends.

It appears to me that reviewers overlook something in this book that is actually its main theme. The fact that you can't get out and walk when flying comes after you with the idea of killing you dead as a door nail. Thus, always in the back of the mind of all good pilots is the need to plan every move, to try to anticipate every eventuality and decide what to do in advance. This is to say that the fear of death is always in the back of a good pilot's mind and should be to assure planning; leaving nothing to chance that can be prepared for.

Thus, what it boils down to is that Buck in one scene after another, without doing it literally, is repeating that old truism: "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." To which I add, "If there are they were [darn] lucky!"

I loved flying, but I always knew it might come and get me. So I learned and you will find that Buck did in spades, that a couple of the surest ways to avoid catastrophe in flying are: [1] to recognize the proposed flight that shouldn't leave the ground in the first place after everything that should be is evaluated, and [2] to turn around when headed into the trouble you are mortally certain can involve dangers you are not reasonably sure you can handle. (Such as finding you can't fly with no fuel by trying to make it too far.)

Naturally I loved this book, recognized the right of the writer to say every word he wrote, disagree with almost nothing he says, or did (except failure to fire a hostess who was an obvious damn fool, as well as insubordinate) and think his prose ranks with the best.

If you never read another book on flying, this one would give you a taste for the whole thing.

Buck's latest book shifts gears away from his classic style of teaching pilots to fly better. This book is autobiography at its best. The reader travels with the author as he learns to fly open cockpit biplanes and then sets aviation records as a teenager. We then join him in the DC-2/DC-3 days as a new copilot for TWA. The upgrade to Captain, flying a B-17 doing research, numerous ocean crossings in all kinds of weather and then the transition to flying jet airliners - it's all here.

Along the way I was introduced to Tyrone Power and Howard Hughes. Fascinating stuff.

I enjoyed this book for its many stories but most of all for the tremendous amount of history about the golden age of aviation that Captain Buck passes along to us.

This book is a treasure.

North Star Over my Shoulder is the best flying book I've ever read, and one of the most fun books that I've read in a long time. Captain Buck has an easy to read style and has had a fascinating life centered around aviation. From the earliest planes through 747s, Buck has flown them all. He bring us along through his life with entertainment and a sense of humor. Highly recommended!

This book parallels Ernest Gann's, "Fate is the Hunter", the best aviation book ever written. And it is a fitting companion piece. Written in a straightforward manner it tells the history of commercial aviation from the viewpoint of one who lived it. It lacks the compelling beauty of Gann's writing and his insights into the mind of pilots. In that respect, it seems impersonal. Nontheless, it's a can't-put-down read for pilots and non-pilots alike.

I always had a dream of flying my own plane and 9 years ago at age 52 I did. Now 2000 hours of constant learning flying mostly my Mooney Bravo I still am excited by soaring aloft and traveling to places new and old. Bob Buck's wonderful memoir created from me a realization of how lucky we are to have had people like Bob, those willing to explore the new frontiers and make avaition a safe and dependable resource for us all. His telling of history and his life is both informative and insipiring. I recommend this book to anyone who loves history, loves flying and wants to read about it from an expert who lived it and loves it as much as anyone. Thank you Bob Buck and may you continue to inspire all. Live long and fly high.

From DC-2s to 747s, Captain Buck flew all the great American airliners of the 20th century. Along the way, he wrote the classic "Weather Flying" and other how-to books. Here he turns his shrewd eye to his own career, and he makes it ours. What a wonderful tale! I really don't care for the High Literary Style that seems to afflict aviation writers, so I really appreciated this homespun account of flying with the North Star over your shoulder (and on a few occasion with it directly overhead). I wish I'd known Captain Buck in his glory days, and I would be a happier passenger if only he were in the cockpit today.

In spite of a somewhat slow start, the story quickly improves and becomes an incredible account from the early days of commercial aviation, where you read about the author becoming a TWA captain flying DC-2s and DC-3s, through his retirement in the 1970s where he flew 747s across the Atlantic.

The fact that one individual lived and experienced all these monumental changes that shaped modern aviation (such as radio navigation, the birth of the ILS (Instrument Landing System), not to mention having a chance the meet and chat with Charles Lindbergh himself as well as Amelia Earhart), plus the quality of the story-telling, makes this a book that can be enjoyed by pilots and non-pilots alike.

I won't spoil the story by going into great detail, but I highly recommend this book for anyone; from aviation history buffs to bold and bald pilots, or for anyone who simply wants to read a great-and true-story.

North Star Over my shoulder was an interesting look at the life of a pilot who was along for the ride throughout modern aviation history. As a pilot, I enjoyed Capt. Buck's stories spanning from the early open cockpit days to his international flights as the first TWA 747 Captain. This book offers insight to the history of aviation and how it has changed since Capt. Buck started flying. A very entertaining book with a historical flair.

I have just spent about three weeks assimilating this remarkable account from a pilot I had never heard of until I bought the book. However, Buck writes with the heart and soul of a man who knows what it is like to do what he did, often under trying conditions, blazing trails and bringing people safely home.

If you have been fortunate enough to have flown an airplane in your life, blessed enough to have done it for enough time to have an understanding of the issues and encounters that Robert Buck writes about, then you need to take some time with this book and sit at the foot of the master while he relates to you a story which most can only dream of.

No lesser reviewer than Walter J. Boyne notes that, "Any airman will love this book and any writer will envy it." So true.