Best of
Biography

1918

Flying Fury: Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps


James McCudden - 1918
     From September 1916 until his death in July 1918 he shot down fifty-seven German planes. Flying Fury is his remarkable story, written a few months before his last flight, and records in fascinating detail the life of a World War One fighter pilot ace. McCudden’s account provides fascinating insight into the development of aerial warfare. He began his life with the Royal Flying Corps in 1913 as a engine-fitter and records the early flights that were made by the British military. At the outbreak of the First World War he left England for France and by 1915 he was in the sky as an observer and gunner. It was only in 1916 that he began to train as a pilot before he took to the skies and became an exceptional fighter pilot; on one occasion shooting down three enemies in as many minutes. His work records in brilliant detail the confusion of the dogfights, the camaraderie of the men who knew they were putting their lives on the lines, the boredom of being grounded and the thrill taking to the skies. Tragically McCudden’s life was cut short just four months before the end of the war, not during combat with enemy planes, but instead due to engine failure that caused his plane to plunge into the ground below. Flying Fury: Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps is essential reading for anyone interested in finding out more about the development of aerial combat and how one man rose to become one of the most formidable aces of the First World War. With his six British medals and one French, McCudden received more awards for gallantry than any other airman of British nationality serving in the First World War. He was also one of the longest serving. By 1918, in part due to a campaign by the Daily Mail newspaper, McCudden became one of the most famous airmen in the British Isles. He died on 9 July 1918 at the age of twenty-three. His work was posthumously published as Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps in 1919. “His skill and daring speak for themselves. Only the finest courage and an unsurpassed mastery of the art of flying and fighting in the air could account for such a record of unflagging work and incessant victory. His work was as thorough as it was brilliant and his thoroughness was an important cause of his success.” Lord Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Flying Corps “I am confident that he would agree with me when I say that the secret of his remarkable success lay in the fact that he fought with his head as well as with his great heart.” Sir John Salmond, Chief Air Marshal

Lone Bull's Mistake: A Lodge Pole Chief Story


James Willard Schultz - 1918
    Schultz's Indian stories. It is the story of an Indian "man without a country." It tells of the adventures of a rebellious Blackfoot Indian and his family after his punishment for a breach of the tribe's hunting laws. It is the account of the wanderings and misfortunes of a Blackfoot Indian who rebels at the tribal hunting laws and with his family leaves the camp of his people. The family wander homeless from tribe to tribe until the man's better nature asserts itself and he rejoins his people when an opportunity comes to save them from an enemy. The author is one of our most famous old-time frontiersmen and Indian fighters, and an Indian by adoption into the Blackfoot tribe.

Ponnammal, Her Story


Amy Carmichael - 1918
    It will be a friend and helper to your faith, a kindling fire to your mis­sionary thoughts, prayers, and efforts, a window through which you will see 'the real India' as it is not often seen, and a picture, wonderful and beautiful, of the life of the Lord lived in His missionary servants, and in the Indian sisters whom they have brought into His all-­loving power and keeping.The interests of the book are manifold. To those who know the writer's Lotus Buds it will be very moving to see, as it were from within, something of the most pathetic and noble rescue­-work in the world. A hundred details of mis­sionary life will assume a new reality and vividness. And, above all, the MASTER of the field, of the labourers, of the harvest, will be ‘glorified in His saint,' this dear saint with the‘steadfast eyes and the brow of peace,' in whom so wonderfully, in life and in that suffering death, He showed Himself alive for evermore.

Kant's Life and Thought


Ernst Cassirer - 1918
    On a very deep level, all of Cassirer’s philosophy was based on Kant’s, and accordingly this book is Cassirer’s explicit coming to terms with his own historical origins. It sensitively integrates interesting facts about Kant’s life with an appreciation and critique of his works. Its value is enhanced by Stephen Körner’s Introduction, which places Cassirer’s Kant-interpretation in its historical and contemporary context.”—Lewis White Beck “The first English translation (well done by James Haden) of a 60-year-old classic intellectual biography. Those readers who know Kant only through the first Critique will find their understanding of that work deepened and illuminated by a long explication of the pre-critical writings, but perhaps the most distinctive contribution is Cassirer’s argument that the later Critiques, and especially the Critique of Judgment, must be understood not as merely applying the principles of the first to other areas but as subsuming the latter into a larger and more comprehensive framework.”—Frederick J. Crown, The Key Reporter “Kant’s Life and Thought is that rare achievement: a lucid and highly readable account of the life and work of one of the world’s profoundest thinkers. Now for the first time available in an admirable English translation, the book introduces the reader to two of the finest minds in the history of philosophy.”—Ashley Montagu

Go, Get ‘Em! —The True Adventures Of An American Aviator Of The Lafayette Flying Corps - [Illustrated Edition]: Who Was The Only Yankee Flyer Fighting ... Boys Of The Rainbow Division In Lorraine


William A. Wellman - 1918
    By the end of 1917 he had earned his wings as a fighter pilot and had joined N. 87 escadrille of the Lafayette Flying Corps. The ‘Black Cats’ flew Nieuport ‘pursuit’ aircraft-first 17s and latterly 24s. Wellman named his own plane Celia-after his mother. In his career as a fighter pilot Wellman chalked up three confirmed ‘kills’ and five ‘probables’ before eventually being shot down by German anti-aircraft fire in March 1918. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre with two palms. Due to his crash injury he was invalided out of French service and returned to the United States where he began a highly regarded career as a film director. This book, published in 1918, recounts Wellman’s wartime experiences while they were still fresh in the mind, as such it is an invaluable first-hand account of the aerial war over the Western Front from the first days of air combat. Recommended.”—Leonaur Print VersionAuthor — Wellman, William Augustus, 1896-1975Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in Boston, The Page company, 1918Original Page Count – 284 pagesIllustration — 16 illustrations.

The Philosophy Of Plotinus: The Gifford Lectures At St. Andrews, 1917-1918 (Vol. 1&2)


William Ralph Inge - 1918