Death Valley in '49 Book

Wow. You want to read a story about a life lived large? You want to read this.

Robin Olds lived the life I would have liked to live when I was a kid, before I realized there would be no more aerial dogfights between rival fighter pilots. It's all missiles over-the-horizon, now. Oh, sure, it'd still be hella fun to fly a modern jet fighter, but the glory days of the business are in the history pages. Which is where we now find Robin Olds, having died a couple of years back.

His memoir has it all, and I mean that. He grew up the son of a WW1 fighter pilot and some of the biggest names of military aviation sat at his father's dinner table talking about the future. Olds would live the future they dreamed, as a P-51 ace in WW2, then as one of the pioneers of jet fighters, and the leader of the famed F-4 Wolf Pack in Vietnam, where Olds downed four MiGs.

He also married a movie star, told President Johnson off to his face (sorta), and spent time as the commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy.

The book is stupendously well written. Lots of military memoirs are filled with boring details and skip the "lifestyle" elements of the writer's life. Not this one. This one is jam-packed with only the good stuff and reads like a thriller. The pages fly by as you read about his exploits, both in and out of the cockpit. He lets you know what life was like in the military without bogging you down, and his descriptions of aerial combat are just lean enough to not confuse.

One of the best things about it his the writing style (he's aided by his daughter and a professional writer), which is so easy that it's almost as if he's sitting on a bar stool next to you with a pint, amiably telling you whatever you ask. It's just easy to read and flows effortlessly.

And the story has an ending, which is a little odd for memoirs, which often just end abruptly. The last few pages are a brief reflection on his life, with a nod to how it all began and that at the end of it all, Olds is still at a bar in heaven, drinking beer with his pals, telling the stories they've always told, and having a grand old time.