Books like Trophy — picked by fans

In many ways, this book epitomizes qualities of a good techno-thriller: personal development, exciting aviation scenes, a place in US power projection, believable characters.

I particularly like the flying sequences told by a pilot who used to fly Intruders in a manner totally believable. I enjoyed the interaction between the two principal characters, sprinkled with heart-stopping drama. I found myself turning pages, wanting more, nodding with satisfaction when the author delivered.

I love this book because the scenes of ariel combat are so realistic. I learned a lot about fighter aircraft and how the Russians could have gotten the better of us with newer technology until one of our own old aircraft was retrofitted to make her superior. Once I got into the fight scenes, I could not put the book down until I found out “who won!”

I’m recommending this book because it is another “formative text” for my writing style, and I have kept a paperback copy of it for almost 40 years.

Unlike Coyle, Barrett Tillman is known primarily for his nonfiction books. This is a crying shame because this book displays some of the most deft aviation fighting I’ve ever seen. Almost as important, Tillman actually develops characters and their relationships (think if Maverick and Charlie had continued past Top Gun, but if Maveric was a mercenary)

Lastly, you can tell that Tillman really did his research as a historian in his fiction. The F-20 Tigershark (central to the plot) doesn’t have a lot of information available on it. Tillman clearly not only loved the airframe, but found everything he could. This makes it work both as a technothriller and (now) alternate history. 

If I wanted to learn what it took to become a US Air Force aviator, I found the perfect book. I had several good chuckles at what raw recruits endured at Pensacola at the hands of no-nonsense instructors. A fail at boot camp meant getting washed out.

When the story’s main character graduated to flying single-engine propeller aircraft, I was in the sky with him and his close friend. Transitioning to jets made my day, as did an occasional amusing amour. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and gained valuable information for my own writing. However, I could not help but wonder whether real life would actually be that romantic.

War is a fundamentally human enterprise. This vivid retelling of how pioneering figures like Haywood Hansell and Curtis LeMay struggled to make the best and most humane use of the powerful new military technology of high-altitude aerial bombardment is also a parable for our age. 

In the book, which began as a podcast and whose audiobook is especially engaging, Malcolm Gladwell explores themes still with us as we wrestle with how to ethically adopt AI-driven autonomous weapons and the uses to which they should be put.

Despite the United States doing its post-war best to accelerate the disintegration of British, French, and Dutch empires, the nation funded some 75% of the cost of the French fight against communist Viet Minh forces.

Martin Windrow, an accomplished editor, has here produced a masterpiece and certainly the definitive account of the battle for Dien Bien Phu and the political and military context. Such is the power of the book that I was compelled to visit the battle site in 2006 and marvel that any military commander would consider building a base in a bowl.

There are many lessons to be learned from the battle, political, strategic, and tactical. The book is referenced and includes clear maps and orders of battle. Just superb.

Unsung Eagles is an intimate tour-de-force of air combat in World War II told, literally, from the perspective of the pilots themselves. The pilots who provided their stories for this book were all unassuming men from humble backgrounds. Yet, after Pearl Harbor, they gladly raised their right hands and swore an oath to defeat the Axis Powers. These brave young men flew various combat missions over the European and Pacific theaters. Yet, after the war, they came home to resume their normal lives and said nary a word about their wartime service, until now.

First published in 1961, this memoir may be the best book ever written about aviation by someone who was both a pilot and a terrific writer. 

I took the liberty of using this title as the heading for one of the chapters in my own book as a tribute to Gann. His visceral accounts of flying the early airliners in America during the 1930s in the burgeoning years of commercial aviation are literally heart-stopping. 

We take so much for granted in this modern age of airline flying but this wonderful book will forever change your perspective of the risks and challenges that went before.  

During the CIA’s covert war in Laos between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on the country, a planeload every 8 minutes for 9 years and makes Laos, along with Cambodia, which shared a similar fate, is the most bombed country in the world. To this day, countless people, many of them children, are maimed and killed by unexploded ordinance that remains hidden in the country’s soil. Fred Branfman, a young American stationed in Laos in the late 1960s, discovered the bombing and exposed the CIA’s covert campaign of terror.

Branfman not only interviewed more than 2,000 refugees of the bombing but motivated many survivors to record their experiences in essays, poems, and pictures. This book, an excellent antidote and companion piece to Air America, is the result.

If you could only have a single book about American involvement in the air war over Burma during World War II, this would be the one. Ted Young’s history of the Tenth Air Force has it all, from high-level political maneuvering (and there was plenty of it) and seemingly endless reorganizations to in-the-cockpit combat accounts and a generous selection of photos and maps. He describes in detail the constantly shifting priorities and strategies faced by the Tenth Air Force, along with the many innovative tactics and techniques developed by units such as the First Air Commando Group. In addition, Young brings fresh insight into many of the officers who led the efforts in Burma, men such as Clayton L. Bissell. Young describes him as “a capable staff officer with broad administrative experience” who nevertheless was unable to establish a good working relationship with Claire L. Chennault, his more colorful counterpart… show more.