Eric Melrose Brown (1919–2016)

Eric Brown had an amazing life, full of daring adventures and a lot of flying hundreds of different aircraft. You can see the survivor bias at work: dozens of narrow escapes from death, while many a friend is killed in the line of duty. It makes for good stories.

The book, however, sometimes feels like a mere list of what happened, with little context or interpretation. I didn't really get an impression of Eric Brown as a person at all, or what it must have been like to live his life.

An exquisite classic, required reading for anyone with an interest in aviation.