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The Aviator
Copyright © 1981
by Ernest K Gann
GK Hall
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Ernest K Gann writes best sellers about flying and fighting — 11, in
fact, most of them published in the 1950s; the best known is
probably The High and the Mighty, but one still comes across a musty
hardcover Fate Is the Hunter or Blaze of Noon on a pine
shelf beside the jigsaw-puzzle boxes in a summer cottage Mr. Gann's
heroes, whether at war in ancient Masada or World War I France,
are usually laconic, fiercely self-reliant loners, cynical
sentimentalists, promiscuous with death, faithful to a pal. —
New York Times
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Fate is the Hunter
Copyright © 1961
by Ernest K Gann
Simon & Schuster
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Fate is the Hunter is partly autobiographical, party a chronicle of
some of the most memorable and courageous pilots the reader will ever
encounter in print; and always this book is about the workings of fate.
The book is studded with characters equally as memorable as the dramas
they act out. — Cornelius Ryan
Mr Gann is a writer saturated in his subject; he has the skill to make
every instance sharp and important and we catch the fever to know that
documentary writing does not often invite. — VS Pritchett, New
Statesman
This book is an episodic log of some of the more memorable of [the
author's] nearly ten thousand hours aloft in peace and (as a member of the
Air Transport Command) in war. It is also an attempt to define by example
his belief in the phenomenon of luck — that "the pattern of anyone's
fate is only partly contrived by the individual." — The New
Yorker
Few writers have ever drawn their readers so intimately into the shielded
sanctum of the cockpit, and it is here that Mr Gann is truly the artist.
— New York Times Book Review
This fascinating, well-told autobiography is a complete refutation of the
comfortable cliché that "man is master of his fate." As far as
pilots are concerned, fate (or death) is a hunter who is constantly in
pursuit of them. There is nothing depressing about Fate is the
Hunter. There is tension and suspense in it but there is great humor
too. Happily, Gann never gets too technical for the layman to understand.
— Saturday Review
This purely wonderful autobiographical volume is the best thing on flying
and the meaning of flying that we have had since Antoine de
Saint-Exup$eacute;ry took us aloft on his winged prose in the late 1930s
and early 1940s. It is a splendid and many-faceted personal memoir that
is not only one man's story but the story, in essence, of all men who fly.
— Chicago Sunday Tribune
This book is an episodic log of some of the more memorable of (the
author's) nearly 10,000 hours aloft in peace and in
war. It is also an
attempt to define by example his belief in the
phenomenon of luck —
that the pattern of anyone's fate is only partly
contrived by the individual. — The New Yorker
Many of aviation's classic stories can be found in Ernest
K Gann's book, Fate is the Hunter.
Perhaps the most outrageous occurred as he and his ATC crew departed Agra
on a hot summer morning in a C-87 named "Gremlin's Castle" and almost
demolished the Taj Mahal. Ernie was a master yarn spinner and his works are
must read for anyone who loves flying. Landings
Ernest K Gann, one of the great writers of our time,
regards life as war — an undeclared war against fate, the fate
that hunts men down. He writes about his own experiences
as a commercial airline pilot during the early days of the
industry — a time when such a job was a ticking clock just
waiting for your time to come to an end. ...
There's an old saying that flying is hours of boredom
interrupted by moments of sheer terror. That is the essence
captured by Gann in this wonderfully written account of the
early world of aviation. — VFA-13 Shadow Riders
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Gentlemen of Adventure
Copyright © 1983
by Ernest K Gann
Arbor House
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There is something relaxing about watching an old pro
like Ernest K Gann go about his work. ... He
gives readers their money's worth. — New York Times
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The Triumph
Copyright © 1986
by Ernest K Gann
Simon & Schuster
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This absorbing sequel to The Antagonists, on which the television
mini-series Masada was based, picks up the story of the
Roman general Flavius Silva the morning after his Pyrrhic victory over
the Jews, who chose to commit mass suicide rather than submit to Roman
domination. ... Ernest K Gann writes with the forward-march
precision of
a Roman orator and the psychological insight of an ancient Greek
dramatist. Especially masterful are his portraits of the gruff,
rough-and-ready Vespasian and the wily Jewish historian
Josephus.
Best of all, he gives us a fresh, realistic look at the love
affair between
Titus and his Jewish mistress Berenice, a story that flowered in
the French neoclassical drama of Corneille and Racine. This is a
historical
novel in the grand manner, unmarred by lapses into soap opera or
sweet-savage formats. — New York Times
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What the Critics Say
Bibliography
