[.ca] North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life (ISBN 0743262301)

From Amazon.com:
Bob Buck may not be as famous as Charles Lindbergh, but he's well known among aviators for setting flight-distance records in the 1930s, flying a B-17 in the Second World War, and finally, becoming a commercial airline pilot who logged more than 2,000 trips across the Atlantic Ocean. North Star over My Shoulder is Buck's memoir of a life spent in the skies. He shares plenty of cockpit wisdom: "A copilot can make a trip or ruin it; get someone who talks too much, gripes about the company, tries to impress you, tells long and boring anecdotes, or is overly aggressive in suggesting ways to run the flight, and the taste is unpleasant." He also answers the question he says nonpilots are most likely to ask him: How do you overcome jet lag? "You don't," he says. Buck addresses offbeat subjects, too, such as what an airline pilot does when one of his first-class passengers is irate about the lack of caviar on a long trip. Readers fascinated by flight will enjoy this book, both for its historical perspective on advances in aviation ("a time no one will ever experience again") and the good advice that springs from almost every page ("sitting low tends to make you level off a little too high, while sitting up high tends to make you fly into the ground and not level off enough"). Pilots will appreciate this book, as will anybody who has ever wondered what it's like to fly a plane. --John Miller

Pilot's Bible for Survival:
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 \odarn\c 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: \o1\c to recognize the proposed flight that shouldn't leave the ground in the first place after everything that should be is evaluated, and \o2\c 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.

Guided by the Stars:
NORTH STAR OVER MY SHOULDER Bob Buck ISBN 0-7432-1964-3 Bob Buck's book about a long life in professional flying is enjoyable reading. Buck has an unpretentious writing style. One who reads his book may gain insight about the pilot's perspective on that next trip across the Atlantic and hope that someone like Buck is flying the plane. Much difficulty and uncertainty faced the pilots of early passenger planes like the DC-2 and DC-3. The engines were temperamental and navigation was crude. Pilots often maintained their orientation by following railroad tracks, highways, and rivers in the day and by the stars at night. The crew accommodations at the end of the flights were anything but luxurious. Buck met some interesting people along the way, such as the actor Tyrone Power, who flew cargo planes in WWII. They once flew around the world together, and Power, who died at the age of forty-four, was a decent person, who attributed the adulation of the crowds to the parts he played rather than to himself. Howard Hughes was another that Buck knew well. He was a rather polite man, Buck found, but one who insisted on being involved in every project down to the smallest detail. People were often kept waiting for decisions in Hughes' far-flung enterprises. Buck also briefly met Amelia Earhart, who came along in the heyday of spectacular flying. He thinks that she tried to fly planes beyond her experience. She had about eight accidents during takeoffs and landings, and she, generally, was not regarded by other pilots as a good pilot. Buck also writes about the early flyer and writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote the books, THE LITTLE PRINCE and the image-rich WIND, SAND, and STARS. Of a flight along the coast of Africa, where Saint-Exupery had flown the mail, Buck writes "I looked down, on the lonely barren land, thinking of him and the other pilots flying their ancient Breguet XIVs ... that periodically failed and dropped them down on the lonely sandscape, and sometimes into unfriendly arms." During this book, Buck is seldom on the ground for long, and there are enough stories of airplane excursions to satisfy the most avid fans of aviation. But Buck also includes interesting details about some of the places visited. For example, about a flight to the island of Iwo Jima, where 24,000 were killed in WWII, Buck observes that the island was "a flat featureless place; it held no beauty, no tenderness, nothing forgiving, it was simply a place to kill and be killed." Buck recollects the days of flying by the stars, and he writes that the romance and skill of being guided by them is something that future flyers will never experience. Sometimes, he says, he stands outside on a clear, winter night and just looks up at "my old friends Sirius, Vega, and Polaris".

An unknown Aviation Legend:
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.

A Great Book:
This is the best flying book I've read. Ever.

A Fascinating Story:
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.