Walter boyne’s résumé makes for unusual reading. He is the author of 42 books and one of the few people to have had bestsellers on both the fiction and the nonfiction lists of The New York Times. A career AirForce officer who won his wings in 1951, he has flown over 5,000 hours in a score of different aircraft, from a Piper Cub to a B-IB bomber, and he is a command pilot. Boyne retired as a colonel in 1974 after 23 years of service (in 1989 he returned for a brief tour of duty to fly the B-IB). He joined the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, becoming acting director in 1982 and director one year later. Upon his retirement in 1986, he took upwriting and consulting; his fourth career, in television, began five years ago.

He is also an inventor (he has been awarded a patent on an advanced information retrieval system), he founded Air & Space, the nation’s best-selling aviation magazine, and he is a member of almost every major aeronautical association and a fellow of the French Académie Nationale de l’Air et de l’Espace. American Heritagereaders who have not yet read Colonel Boyne may well have already seen him; he is a familiar figure on television,appearing as a commentator on aviation and military events on all the major networks.

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