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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9781593760069
ISBN number: 159376006X
Label: Shoemaker & Hoard
Manufacturer: Shoemaker & Hoard
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 192
Printing Date: August 30, 2004
Publishing house: Shoemaker & Hoard
Sale Popularity Level: 401860
Studio: Shoemaker & Hoard
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter—recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award—this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. The editors have gathered selections and photographs from a journal Salter kept during the Korean War, published here for the very first time, and assembled selections from two novels, The Hunters and Cassada, and from the author's celebrated memoir, Burning the Days. As commented in a brief introduction, 'It is, as a record of the day-to-day, mission-to-mission life of a young fighter pilot, a remarkable document by any standard. But it provides as well a view into the 'crucible of a writer's beginnings, like pencil studies that precede a painting, in which the essential qualities of the artist's hand are unmistakable.''
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Gods of Tin is a book divided into three parts roughly equating to the authors various service assignments within the Air Force. The very first section covers his time from enlistment to his flight training and onto the time where he was ready to ship out to Korea. The second part is a partial journal of his time (100 missions) spent flying F-86 fighters over North Korea and China during the Korean War and the third part details life as a pilot in the European theater during the cold war.
The author has a distinctive style of writing that gives you the feeling of being on his shoulder while the events are unfolding. There are short, brutal sentences while he is writing in the journal, which capture the time there wonderfully, as the time was spent living in short brutal bursts. His imagery is impossible to describe for us mere mortals and must be read to be appreciated. A sort of poetry in sentence form would be the closest I could come to a description that would do the author's writing any justice.
My only complaint, if it can be called one, is that the book is small, containing a mere 170 pages. I could have gone on reading this for days, and yet it was over so quickly.
Rated by buyers 
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If you want real literature without fiction, this is it.
Prentiss Davis
Truckee, CA
Rated by buyers -
Having read some for the works from which this book takes much of its content I was prepared to be disappointed; however, Salter has woven the material into a much tighter and stronger work. It's clear that he looked back at the old material with improved writing skills and a more mature handling of the nature of warfare in the early days of the jets.
He captures the isolation of these modern day knights of the air, the randomness of early aerial engagements in the very first jet on jet conflict and one which was further complicated by the political restrictions which put the bases on the north side of the Yalu off limits. With the possible exception of the middle-east the Korean war probably marked the last engagement of large numbers of American aircraft in air to air combat over a small area.
Highly recommended, especially for those who who have enjoyed his other works. Deserves a place on the bookshelf between Stranger to The Ground, Night Flight, Tom Wolfe's writings on flight and other literate classics on the challenge and characters in flying.
For those wanting to know more about the why of the Korean air engagements Robert Cornan's "Boyd The Story of a Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Course of War" is most enlightening.
Like Wind, Sand and Stars the book has a very broad appeal that is not limited to pilots. Great gift for someone who appreciates good writing.
Rated by buyers -
This was my introduction to James Salter and it was the book that made me interested in his writing. One of the wonderful aspects about Gods is not simply that it contains Salters wonderful writing, but also that the editors have managed to collect the best pasages from a number of his books. After reading Cassada, Burning the Days and the Hunters, I returned to this volume and found that nearly every one of my favorite passages on flying (achieving competence or learning "equitation" as he puts it at one point) from these books appears in Gods. And a bonus are the excerpts from Salter's jounals as a fighter jock driving F-86s in combat in Korea: these sometimes read like poetry leaving an image that has the feel of a Turner watercolour -- a couple of colorful strokes that still give a strong sense of the energy and paradoxically tranquility of moments flying. Originally in Burning: "I will never see it again or, just this way all that is below. Some joys exist in retrospect, but not this, the serenity, the cities shining in detailed splendor."
Rated by buyers 
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Salter is a fine writer and an elegant stylist, with the ability to blend exquisite imagery and brute, violent action effortlessly, so that the reader feels transported into the situation he sets up.
This edition of excerpts from three previous books, however, leaves me with a "Rip Off" feeling. Why not just read the books the two editors have ripped this material out of?
The bonus I guess is the frank Korean War journal which has not been published.
In his declining years Faulkner published a similar book BIG WOODS, composed largely of excerpts from books still in print, given his imprimatur as a volume of hunting stories, and his publishers encouraged Faulkner's audience to think of it as a new book by virtue of its new juxtapositions. Now Salter is getting the Faulkner treatment. So be it, but don't expect all the readers to be happy about paying money once again to a speciality publisher for a lot of stories we heard just a few years back when Salter published BURNING THE DAYS (1997). He's great and all but he's no William Faulkner.
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