Sagittarius Rising (Hardcover)

~ Cecil Lewis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Aero, January 2007

“I have read a number of different accounts of aviators in the First World War, but the world that Cecil Lewis unveils in Sagittarius Rising is unlike any other I have previously read about … What makes this book so special is not only Cecil Lewis’s story, but the way in which he shares his life experiences. He writes so eloquently, painting an amazingly detailed picture with his words ... If I had to pick the one book that I could own on the personal accounts of aviators from the First World War, this book would be it … [Lewis’s] ability to captivate your imagination with his words makes for a book that is very difficult to put down once you start reading it.”

Aviation History, November 2007

“This beautiful work evokes the air war of 1914-1918 in an unusual and moving way. It was written by a sensitive artist who, unlike so many of his comrades, had his life preserved by a series of fortunate assignments during his career as a combat pilot. He thus acquired the skill to match his love of flying, and so survived the war … Given that Cecil Lewis left school at 17, lying about his age to get into the Royal Flying Corps, his ability with words is astounding. Even more remarkable is that much of his 1936 Sagittarius Rising is written with passionate, embracing enthusiasm of youth. His foreword wryly acknowledges this, asking the reader’s forgiveness for his inclusion of some tentative romantic encounters … a book that everyone who loves aviation should read.”

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

The aircraft were parasols, Sopwith Camels, Moranes; the young warriors who flew them were the world's first aces. They piloted their flimsy planes in dawn patrols across no-man's-land and over enemy trenches, dived headlong--guns stuttering--into deadly Richthofen Circus, and dueled with an adversary as brave as themselves. They fought the first--and last--gallant war in the skies.

These memoirs of a combat pilot in England's Royal Flying Corps during WW I are a great classic of military aviation, a chronicle of a lost age of heroes and the birth of a new age of flight.

"This prince of pilots has had a charmed life in every sense of the word. He is a thinker, a master of words and a bit of a poet" --George Bernard Shaw --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 332 pages
• Publisher: Leo Cooper (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0850523478
• ISBN-13: 978-0850523478
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,226,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Right Stuff - generation ONE", April 3, 2003

By	M J Heilbron Jr. "Dr. Mo" (Long Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sagittarius Rising (Paperback)

What a lovely, poetic book. We are lucky to have had someone so gifted in prose be able to witness, and hence document, those giddy and terrifying experiences being an airman in WW I.
Those wonderful primitive planes, flown by men who clearly "pushed the envelope" decades before our test pilots made that a well-known expression.
This is memoir as literature; it is beautifully written with haunting and evocative phrasing. He knows how to write thrilling action pieces, as the dogfights have a "you are there" quality most authors fail to achieve.
Lewis sprinkles in some philosophy (his father's influence), and the parts about technology and warfare are particularly striking given what's happening in the world today.
The book straddles pro-war and anti-war sentiments so fairly and soberly, it should be required reading for everyone. I mean everyone.
Junior high kids to college students to grandparents.
It's one of those books so well written, it reads effortlessly. I can't recommend this more highly.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most unlikely book about war, April 1, 2000

By	Owen Hughes (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sagittarius Rising (Paperback)

This uplifting, sometimes vain, sometimes extraordinarily poetic book, is a most unlikely book about war. For a start, Lewis had no right to survive the war over which he flew so many times, let alone live until 1993 or so, and a very advanced age. Nor is it about the war we think we know ourselves, down there in the awful trenches of the Somme. It is a silvery, unreal sort of war, much of the time. A thread-like clinging to existence pervades the story at times, as though Lewis knows, even years afterwards, that he had been asking for too much, and having won it, should now keep a low profile lest the fates remember him suddenly and deal him a mortal blow. Just as our own knowledge of what really happened in that faraway war is fairly murky (in spite of the immense amount of documentation), so Lewis, coming back to it via his log books many years later, has no clear memory of particular events. Just of flying, flying ever onwards, one sortie after another, with the occasional scare marking the passing of months, but little else. Except for the empty seats in the Mess, one suspects that it was all fairly dreamy for this 18 or 19-year-old lad, of whom much was indeed being asked too soon.

I enjoyed the book. I liked its ups and downs. I was very impressed about finding such writing coming from one who had every reason to shut up altogether, as so many of his contemporaries did. It has been called (by whom? - Shaw perhaps) one of the six best books to come out of World War I. I haven't read them all, but I'd have to agree that it is a fine book, even though it shudders at times, on the wing. It scarcely matters - what is good about it is in fact remarkable - the poetry of the air, particularly. I'm just grateful that one who had that very unique viewpoint, at a time when aircraft were going slow enough for their human passengers to be able to think, survived to share it with us. It couldn't have been written about any other period and, probably, by any other writer. That may just make it unique.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poetic pilot of yesteryear, December 8, 2003

By	G.M.Bell (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sagittarius Rising (Greenhill Military) (Paperback)

Cecil Lewis takes us through world war one as a fighter ace in
the RFC and in particular the famous 56 squadron which hosted such legends as Mannock, Ball, McCudden and Bishop, to name a few.
Although this is an interesting book, I found the story almost
like a Biggles tale with terms like rot and ripping.
Some of the facts are hazy,Lewis says McCudden was shot down and
killed,in fact McCudden died when engine failure caused him to
crash. For devotees of WW1,McCuddens Flying Fury ,is ,in my opinion, a better rendering with a wealth of photographs which
bring a sense of realism somewhat lacking in Sagittarius Rising
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