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WHEELS UP

Name: WHEELS UP
Author: Steve Taylor
ISBN: 978-0-9914911-0-0

SKY JINKS IN THE JET AGE

by Steve Taylor ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2014

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A memoir about what happens to a hyperactive kid when he grows up and becomes an airline pilot.
Debut memoirist Taylor grew up in South Carolina, matriculated at The Citadel, flew in Vietnam, and then spent a long, very satisfying career as a pilot with Delta Airlines. He didn’t achieve his dream of being a fighter pilot (for one thing, he had a very dicey stomach), but his stint in Southeast Asia piloting huge C-130 cargo planes prepared him well to fly Delta’s big jets. The book’s early chapters are pretty brutal, as upperclassmen at The Citadel screamed at him and tormented him, and then instructors in flight school did the same. But Taylor was spunky, giving as good as he got, and he loved to play practical jokes and pull pranks, such as when he tricked flight attendants into thinking a weather balloon was a UFO. Some of these pranks are funny, but others are somewhat labored in the telling. Readers have a front-row seat during harrowing landings in Vietnam, close calls flying for Delta, and other misadventures. When Taylor writes of retiring at the age of 60, saying, despite the parting festivities, that it was “one of the saddest days of my life,” readers will believe him. There are many more stories here; for example, the author sailed solo from Bermuda to North Carolina. (Taylor holds a U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license and, alone and becalmed at sea, gives his inner poet free rein.) He also writes of hunting turkey and deer; raising his four kids as a single dad; his late, touching tribute to a man who taught him how to temper steel, and much more. Readers will overlook the frat-boy quality of the early high jinks, because when push came to shove, Taylor proved to be a sensitive, responsible grown-up. They will come to like Capt. Taylor very much, which is more than half the charm of a good memoir and a sign of a good memoirist. The book also includes photographs by the author.
A good read, of special interest to those who love flying.

Pub Date: May 16, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-9914911-0-0

Page Count: 211

Publisher: Joggling Board Press

Review Posted Online: July 8, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)