The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War

The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War

The vivid story of the young Americans who fought and died in the aerial battles of World War I. Samuel Hynes's The Unsubstantial Air is a chronicle of war that is more than a military history; it traces the lives and deaths of the young Americans who fought in the skies over Europe in World War I. Using letters, journals, and memoirs, it speaks in their voices and answers primal questions: What was it like to be there? What was it like to fly those planes, to fight, to kill? The volunteer fliers were often privileged young men―the sort of college athletes and Ivy League students who might appear in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and sometimes did. For them, a war in the air would be like a college reunion. Others were roughnecks from farms and ranches, for whom it would all be strange. Together they would make one Air Service and fight one bitter, costly war. A wartime pilot himself, the memoirist and critic Samuel Hynes tells these young men's saga as the story of a generation. He shows how they dreamed of adventure and glory, and how they learned the realities of a pilot's life, the hardships and the danger, and how they came to know both the beauty of flight and the constant presence of death. They gasp in wonder at the world seen from a plane, struggle to keep their hands from freezing in open-air cockpits, party with actresses and aristocrats, and search for their friends' bodies on the battlefield. Their romantic war becomes more than that―it becomes a harsh but often thrilling new reality. “ The Unsubstantial Air is written with personal knowledge of what it is to be young and learning to fly, and of the gains and losses that combat flying brings to those who engage in it . . . those young men rose to the challenge, and Hynes has paid them handsome tribute. A terrific book.” ― Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “This history of American airmen in the First World War conveys the fervor with which young men rushed to take part in a new form of combat. Many of them were acquainted thanks to boarding schools or the Ivy League, and illusions of glory lingered among the corps, even as pilots crashed carrying out ill-defined missions in untested machines and without parachutes. Hynes relies on contemporary letters and diaries . . . [and] captures the flyers' perspective and the rackety, exhilarating experience of flight.” ― New Yorker “[ The Unsubstantial Air ], both thrilling and poignant, often employs a graceful present tense, and incorporates numerous first-person accounts, many of them newly discovered by Mr. Hynes's assistant on the project, Suzanne McNatt (a retired Princeton librarian to whom the book is dedicated). And from its pilot's-eye view it presents a somewhat different World War I from the muddy, poison-gassed charnel house described in so many of the books published to commemorate the war's 100th anniversary.” ― Charles McGrath, The New York Times “This year we saw a lot of books about World War I, and Samuel Hynes' The Unsubstantial Air is one of the best . . . [Hynes] writes in such a beautiful way, so the experiences of these men are so moving, and they were so brave . . . He does a wonderful job honoring them.” ― Nancy Pearl, NPR's "Morning Edition" “A beautifully written evocation of the Ivy Leaguers, farm boys and wild men who flew avions de chasse from (mainly) French airfields, based on their letters, flight diaries and memories.” ― Roy Foster, Times Literary Supplement “A beautifully written evocation of the Ivy Leaguers, farm boys and wild men who flew avions de chasse from (mainly) French airfields, based on their letters, flight diaries and memories.” ― Roy Foster, Times Literary Supplement “Samuel Hynes is simultaneously a great gift to his complicated country and to our English language. He vividly brings to life our earliest air warriors and does so with a seemingly effortless but exhilarating prose that soars in much the same way his aviators do. Masterful.” ― Ken Burns “A must-read for anyone interested in military history, The Unsubstantial Air is also Hynes' illuminating, heartfelt tribute to his pilot comrades of another conflict.” ― Chris Patsilelis, Tampa Bay Times “A deeply empathetic account of the first gentlemen pilots feeling their ways in uncharted territory . . . Intimate and memorable portraits of these idealistic, daredevil young men are contained in a marvelously fluid narrative.” ― Kirkus (starred review) “[Hynes] vividly recreates the experience of flying in WWI . . . A must read for anyone interested in aviation history, military history, and the American experience in the Great War.” ― Publishers Weekly “This is a magical book. With the deft wizardry we've come to expect from him, Samuel Hynes manages to take us simultaneously up into the air and back in time. No one who encounters his knowing but empathetic portraits of America's first wartime flyers will ever forget them.” ― Geoffrey C . Ward , author of The Roosevelts: