Monday, February 25, 2013

Ed Rasimus's First Two Books

     When Thunder Rolled and Palace Cobra: I read them over the last week.  They're like stepping into a time machine; while the authorial voice is the guy you knew from his blog -- and should be, he wrote the first one not all that long before starting it -- it's still, somehow, a much younger guy talking, from an earlier time.

     The two books recount his two tours in Southeast Asia (some years apart), flying sorties over North Vietnam; and they're about dealing with fear, dealing with the addictive exhilaration of doing the job, day after day, and making it back.  They are memoirs, not novels; some threads start and are never returned to.  They capture the scene with compelling clarity.

     Fighter pilots are a specialized breed and these two books give you a view of them you'd never get in real life unless you were one.  Highly recommended.  Available as both book-type books and for the Kindle.  Get them via the Amazon link at Tam's.

3 comments:

  1. " Fighter pilots are a specialized breed and these two books give you a view of them you'd never get in real life unless you were one."

    In that same vein allow me to recommend "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason. Hands down the best book I have ever read about Viet Nam and also the best aviation related book. It is a first person account of a helicopter pilot's life in combat. Unforgetable.

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  2. Yep, and he's 'lucky' he survived those tours... Those who have been there and come home understand the underlying story...

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  3. Cool, the library has 3 of 'em -- on my list of stuff there.

    In this vein, I'm a fan of stuff like Dale Brown's Flight of the Old Dog, and Stephen Coonts' Flight of the Intruder. Some years ago I read a very good story of F-105 operations over N. Vietnam, not Thud Ridge, written by a pilot, which might have been When Thunder Rolled, but Rasimus' name doesn't ring a bell. I remember developing a whole new distaste for LBJ as I read it.

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