cover image Mavericks of the Sky: The First Daring Pilots of the U.S. Air Mail

Mavericks of the Sky: The First Daring Pilots of the U.S. Air Mail

Barry Rosenberg, Catherine Macaulay. William Morrow & Company, $25.95 (341pp) ISBN 978-0-06-052949-9

Rueben Hollis Fleet took a different path from the fur trappers and lumberjacks of his hometown in the Pacific Northwest in the 1800s: he became a major in the U.S. Army and helped the Post Office establish the first airmail service, which depended on novice Army pilots to fly mail from coast to coast as a way to improve their navigation skills. A surprisingly exciting history of a potentially banal subject, this book's appeal lies in a variety of inclusions: well-placed quotations from news articles, a pilot's unpublished manuscript and interviews with Maj. Fleet; the involvement of the Army and President Woodrow Wilson during WWI; and details of the struggle to improve early aircraft and engines.