The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War

Samuel Hynes

Oct 2014 · Macmillan + ORM

About this ebook

The vivid account of the young Americans who fought and died in the aerial battles of World War I, told in their own words.

The Unsubstantial Air is the gripping story of the Americans who fought and died in the aerial battles of World War I. Much more than a traditional military history, it is an account of the excitement of becoming a pilot and flying in combat over the Western Front, told through the voices and words of the aviators themselves.

A World War II pilot himself, the memoirist and critic Samuel Hynes revives the adventurous young men who inspired his own generation to take to the sky. By drawing on the letters sent home, diaries kept, and memoirs published in the years that followed, he brings to life their emotions, anxieties, and triumphs. They gasp in wonder at the world seen from a plane, struggle to keep their hands from freezing in open-air cockpits, party with actresses and aristocrats, rest of Voltaire’s castle, and search for their friends’ bodies on the battlefield. The young pilots’ romantic war becomes more than that—a harsh but often thrilling reality. Weaving together their testimonies, The Unsubstantial Air is a moving portrait of a generation coming of age under new and extreme circumstances.

Praise for The Unsubstantial Air

“Samuel Hynes is simultaneously a great gift to his complicated country and to our English language. He vividly brings to life our earliest air warriors and does so with a seemingly effortless but exhilarating prose that soars in much the same way his aviators do. Masterful.” —Ken Burns

“A beautifully written evocation of the Ivy Leaguers, farm boys, and wild men who flew avions de chasse from (mainly) French airfields, based on their letters, flight diaries and memories.” —Roy Foster, The Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year (2014)

About the author

Samuel Hynes is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of a celebrated memoir of serving as a marine pilot in World War II, Flights of Passage. His book on soldiers' accounts of twentieth-century wars, The Soldiers' Tale, won a Robert F. Kennedy Award. He was a featured commentator on Ken Burns's documentary The War. He is also the author of several works of literary criticism, including The Auden Generation and The Edwardian Turn of Mind, and a memoir, The Growing Seasons. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.