Hardcover. London, Souvenir Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 251 pages. Illustrated with phtographs, line drawings and maps. Translated from the Dutch by Adrienne Dixon. The autobiography of a Dutch youth who "joined the German navy in a spirit of bravado, only to find himself trapped in the final, agonising throes of Germany's defeat." Subsequent tours in the French Foreign Legion and Korea led from his being a devotee of war to a confirmed pacifist. A fancnating life told with honesty and passion.
Hardcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland & Co., 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering. Part 1: A Korean Childhood in Japan, 1930-1944; Part 2: Growing Up in Korea, 1944- 1951. No Dust jacket issued.
Hardcover. Washington DC, Shoemaker & Hoard, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray boards with blue cloth spine, 150 pages, b&w illustrations. A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter, this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. James Salter is considered one of America's greatest prose stylists. The Arm of Flesh (later revised and retitled Cassada ) and his first novel, The Hunters, are legendary in military circles for their descriptions of flying and aerial combat. A former Air Force pilot who flew F-86 fighters in Korea, Salter writes with matchless insight about the terror and exhilaration of the pilot's life. This book collects passages from two other books he wrote about his military flight career and entries from his personal journal kept during his tours of military flying duty through flight training in late WWII, into combat duty in Korea in 1952, and through his post war flying up into the early 1960s. Masterfully edited by Jessica and William Benton, it has been organized chronologically and simply is wonderful. You can read from the journal entry, and then it is followed by fiction he created using that experience. No dust jacket, clean, bright copy.