Books like Bell X-1 — picked by fans

This book describes the very beginning of experimental flights at the Muroc Bombing and Gunnery Range. When the U.S. entered WWII, it began looking for an isolated location to conduct flight testing of Top-Secret aircraft. Muroc provided the ideal location for cutting-edge flight research on the turbojet revolution. 

After the end of the War in 1946, however, a new type of research activity designed to explore the most challenging unknowns of flight began. This was the dawn of the “X-Planes.” Today, this place is called Edwards Air Force Base.

This book is written by someone who really knows the program and the Mach 3 airplane. Milton O. Thompson, a pilot active in the X-15 program from beginning to end, tells the dramatic story of one of the most successful research aircraft ever flown. I personally have met three of the 12 X-15 pilots: Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle (both from my NASA days), and Scott Crossfield, whom I met at an Experimental Aircraft Association meeting.

The book not only describes the aircraft, the flights, and the pilots but the NACA Langley Research Center’s wind tunnel work on aerodynamic heating and transfer, stability and control, and hypersonic turbulent boundary layer data for aircraft performance.

The book starts with the second flight; he has already broken the sound barrier. His writing style grabs you. After his WW II experiences, he knows that he is in a very dangerous business: that of a test pilot. In 1953, he flew a Russian MiG that had fallen into U.S. hands, being the first American to do so. That December, he set a new speed record, pushing past Mach 2 in a Bell X-1A. 

Every pilot knows about this national hero. This book also describes his many commands and his role in training the astronauts as head of the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School. At 89, he flew past Mach 1 again to celebrate the 65th Anniversary of his breaking the sound barrier

The concept for this aircraft was born from General Curtis LeMay’s desire for a heavy bomber with the weapon load and range of the subsonic B-52 and a top speed in excess of the supersonic medium bomber, the B-58 Hustler. I once met General LeMay in the Mercury Control Center in 1962. 

However, in April 1961, Defense Secretary McNamara stopped the production of the XB-70 due to rapid cost escalation and the USSR’s newfound ability to destroy aircraft at extremely high altitudes with missiles or the new Mig-25 fighter. The XB-70 became famous for its breakthrough technology and the spectacular images captured when an observing Starfighter collided with the Valkyrie, which crashed into the Mojave Desert.

This was the book that made me a pilot. I often tell people that the movie was about the astronauts, whereas the book is about the pilots who were astronauts.

In this book, Wolfe captures the essence of what it is to be a Pilot better than any other book I have ever read. I first read this when I was in my teens. Before every check ride, I revisited selected passages to get in the right frame of mind to go out and crush my flight.

This is the book that inspired, encouraged, and drove me. I have read and re-read it more times than I can remember, and I will undoubtedly continue to read it far into the future.

Kristóf (1935-2011) was a Hungarian writer who fled to Switzerland during the war and wrote in French.

The Notebook (the first in the trilogy) is currently number one on my list of all-time favourites. It has all the elements of storytelling that I love: deep, psychological insight into the human heart; adroit use of archetypes, which give the book a timeless, folkloric feel; concision (no waffling) and a poetic, pared-back language that creates a sense of startling immediacy.

Kristóf writes about World War II through the eyes of two young brothers in a Nazi-occupied country (unnamed), and she shocks us awake not through sensationalised violence but through matter-of-fact narration.

It reads like a cross-between dramatic monologue and biblical parable – she stretches the novel form and opens up new possibilities for writing. 

I recommend this book because it gives a broader picture of the women who changed the way women participate in society forever. It wasn’t just building bombs, liberty ships, and planes that women had a part in. It was everything! When I’ve talked to women who lived during that time, and when I read this book, I realized how many ways women changed during that period of history.

“I must be good; I must be good.” Willie Beech’s mother drummed the mantra into him when he left home as an evacuee. My heart went out to the boy from the first page, where it is clear he had been maltreated, neglected, and indoctrinated with a cruel sense of godliness in the guise of caring.

His curmudgeonly evacuation host, Tom Oakley, is the kind of person whose stern manner I would have feared as a child but who hides a kind heart and a strong sense of fair play. This story is one of my all-time favorites.

An unforgettable collection of linked stories, Heirlooms follows one Jewish family escaping Holocaust-era St. Malo, France through to present-day America and Israel. Hall depicts with masterful, exquisite prose just what it means to be a refugee, to rebuild a life outside one’s own country, to survive and endure. I recently taught Heirlooms to a class of fiction writing students who deeply appreciated this stunning collection and what they could learn from it about storytelling, and about resilience.

Technically about World War II, this work covers Chim’s work depicting culture, politics, and life before and after the war, so the circumstances leading to conflict and its aftermath. Chim was the co-founder of Magnum Photos, so his contribution to photojournalism is immense, and his photos are beautifully lit and composed even as they capture fleeting moments: Polish school children waiting for a bus in the rain, a baby reaching for bread at a displaced person’s camp or a boy playing in the ruins of a bombed building. The book also includes later photos of celebrities and movie stars, which, when seen alongside his earlier work creates an interesting narrative of a world putting itself back together and once again seeking out joy and beauty.