From Publishers Weekly
A splendid thing in a small package is this flying book compiled from several earlier works of fiction (including the great novel of Korean War aviation, The Hunters) and memoir, and from Salter's journals. Salter graduated from West Point in 1945 and went straight into the Army Air Force, later the U.S. Air Force. His training was not always smooth—he once lost his way over Pennsylvania and crashed into a house in Massachusetts. But he survived to qualify in fighters and to fly a tour of duty (100 missions) in Korea in F-86s, shooting down one MiG. After the war Salter flew fighters in Europe before resigning from the air force to embark upon a distinguished literary career. The text has excerpts from The Hunters; another novel about the European years, Cassada; his previous memoir Burning the Days; and an unpublished diary from the Korean tour. Although it's sometimes difficult to tell whose voice one is hearing, all the voices have a superb command of the English language and vividly depict the sensations and human interactions involved in flying. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Award-winning novelist Salter is a West Point graduate and was a pilot in the Korean War. The missions he flew over Korea form not only the basis of his fiction but also the foundation on which he built much of the rest of his life. This book, concerned with his flying years, draws from a journal he kept at the time, from the novels The Hunters (1956) and cassada (2000), and from his memoir Burning the Days (1997). The journal sections, in particular, amount to a jump back to a time and place largely forgotten except by those who were there; the whole book is valuable for that alone, though those interested in the genesis of Salter's writing will highly appreciate it. Above all, the book collocates some of the finest aviation writing of the twentieth century, otherwise hard to find, if not altogether out of print. Let us hope this book will inspire the reprinting of some of those from which it extracts. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
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-recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award-this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. The editors have gathered selections and photographs from a journal Salter kept during the Korean War, published here for the first time, and assembled selections from two novels, The Hunters and Cassada, and from the author's celebrated memoir, Burning the Days. As commented in a brief introduction, "It is, as a record of the day-to-day, mission-to-mission life of a young fighter pilot, a remarkable document by any standard. But it provides as well a view into the 'crucible of a writer's beginnings, like pencil studies that precede a painting, in which the essential qualities of the artist's hand are unmistakable.'"

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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-recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award-this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. The editors have gathered selections and photographs from a journal Salter kept during the Korean War, published here for the first time, and assembled selections from two novels, The Hunters and Cassada, and from the author's celebrated memoir, Burning the Days. As commented in a brief introduction, "It is, as a record of the day-to-day, mission-to-mission life of a young fighter pilot, a remarkable document by any standard. But it provides as well a view into the 'crucible of a writer's beginnings, like pencil studies that precede a painting, in which the essential qualities of the artist's hand are unmistakable.'"

FROM THE CRITICS

Andrew Ervin - The Washington Post

Salter is the rare stylist whose prose, however complex, always streaks across the page at the perfect pace. He will swing between a feverish, mile-a-minute tempo and an equally dramatic slow-motion attention to detail, often in the same paragraph. Anyone interested in military or aviation history will find a lot to savor in Gods of Tin.

Publishers Weekly