About this ebook
“The context [of World War I air warfare] can be obtained from William E. Burrows’s ‘true history,’ a very good book. He has not only read the available material, but talked to a great many people who knew Richthofen. The result is as good a look at the withdrawn Prussian personality as we are likely to get.” — Pierce Fredericks, New York Times Book Review
“This is a fine biography of the German flying ace of World War I fame, who, at the time of his death at age 25, was already a legend. The author has researched well his subject giving the reader a look at the person, not just the mystique, and reconstructs a few of the Red Baron’s famous dog-fights.” — US Naval Institute Proceedings
“This ‘true history of the Red Baron’ gets behind the mystique clinging to the World War I aviation ace to the question of his use, or mis-use, by German propaganda.” — Wall Street Journal
“In this intriguing biography, Burrows zooms in on the man behind the myth. He analyzes Richthofen’s persisting influence on his compatriots today.” — Book World
“The Burrows book does serve to freshen the memory of the Red Baron and his place in history.” — The Louisville Times
“William E. Burrows has done, in Richthofen, a sensitive job of examining how a killer is turned into a myth.” — Christian Science Monitor
About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1937, William E. Burrows became enraptured with flying as a youngster by looking up and seeing the airliners coming and going from LaGuardia and Idlewild (later John F. Kennedy International) airports in his neighborhood in Forest Hills, New York. While his classmates at Forest Hills High School participated in sports and other extracurricular activities, Burrows built and flew balsawood and paper airplanes in vacant lots near his apartment and at 17, unbeknownst to his mother, spent his allowance briefly taking flying lessons in a canvas and wood Piper Cub near LaGuardia. He got a congressional appointment to the first class at the US Air Force Academy but flunked the physical because he couldn’t climb a rope to the ceiling in the gym at Mitchel Air Force Base on Long Island.
He took a BA and an MA in Political Science at Columbia in 1960 and 1962, decided on a career in journalism, and joined The New York Times as a clerk on the Foreign Desk on October 15, 1962, one week before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Burrows was eventually put on the commercial aviation beat. He has also reported for The Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, has published 14 non-fiction books including Richthofen: A True Story of the Red Baron and This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, won several awards, and taught journalism at New York University for 35 years; he created NYU’s graduate Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, and is the NYU Journalism Department’s only professor emeritus.
