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Summary: FLIGHT OF PASSAGE CRASHES UPON TAKEOFF.
Review: This book lacks any clear insight or revelation about anyone or anything. Quite simply, it is cynical, derivative pap.
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Summary: A wonderful memoir of family, flying and fatherly love.
Review: Rinker Buck's Flight of Passage is a wonderful collection of passages devoted to the author's long standing quest to reconcile his relationship with a domineering, eccentric father through the vehicle of a cross country flight with his peculiar and trusting older brother Kernanhan. It is an oddessey - a wonderful tale of wanderlust, brotherly devotion, friendship and understanding told through the recollections and remembrances of a fifteen year old boy, oftentimes at odds with his demanding and powerful father.The story is set in the mid-sixties, at a time when our country was still rattled by the Kennedy family tragedy, yet not so jaded as to lose interest in the story of two young men in an antique airplane reliving their father's barnstorming days (and repeated, worn out stories of Stearman men and waterbags) and living their own memories to tell stories to their sons someday in probably the same fashion! Personally, I had much in comman with the author's brother, having attended the same schools, and entered the same profession. I also happen to own and fly a restored Piper Cub. But the magic of this book is it's ability to appeal to both flyers and non flyers alike. It reminds us that we live in a great and beautiful country. It has it's faults, as we all do, and like most families, we have our problems and miscommunications, unmet expectations and misunderstandings, but with experience and "letting go" we appreciate the love that has been bestowed upon us - maybe years later - but a gift nonetheless. A beautiful story.
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Summary: Promotion of illegal aviation activities? A teens struggle?
Review: This book is a memoir of a teen's trip across the United States in a J-3 Piper Cub and the struggle between a teen and his father. The tale of the trip is interesting, but please spare me the struggle bit. It is as if no other teen has ever had a struggle with his father's personality. Unfortunately the book was not a promotion of general aviation and only served the image many have of general aviation pilots. We are all a bunch barnstorming, death defying individuals. Sorry, but as a commercial pilot I cannot applaud the frequent and flagrant violations of the Federal Aviation Regulations committed by the Bucks.
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Summary: A Really Good Read.
Review: This memoir is the best I've read in quite a while. I really didn't want the boys' flight to end. Well written, funny, educational, and with a great sense of discovery. It would make a great screenplay. Buy this book!!
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Summary: very readable account of an interesting journey
Review: Rinker Buck and his brother certainly had an interesting youth, being able to fly cross country in a single engine plane as teens. The journey is fascinating, as is tbe account of their relationship with their father. Unfortunately, one must question the accuracy of the account since at least one glaring error is made. Buck talks of flying down through western Kentucky and seeing railroad tunnels and smoke drifting from lone cabins in the hills. I suspect he has confused this trip with an earlier trip over eastern Kentucky or Tennessee, since there are no hills to speak of in the western part of the state, no railroad tunnels, and almost certainly no cabins (in the 1960s!). A conspicuous error like this calls into question some of the other details in the book, but on balance it is enjoyable reading.
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Summary: Warm, everyman's recollection of youth, dads and anventure
Review: I thought it was at first, another pilot story so interesting only to other pilots. It didn't take long to realize this was a well thought out book on the difficult relationships boys have with their fathers. Wonderful read.
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Summary: Left me speechless and dreamful
Review: Like a narcotic, this book left me looking for another dose, searching for an equivalent masterpiece in bookstores everywhere. Starting on the very first page and ending with the sad and inevitable necessity of closing the back cover, the flow of events, emotions, facts and tales falls deep into the heart of any aviator or anyone the least involved in aviation. It revives what most of us think of as an excellent but gone chapter of flying: barnstorming. In my heart it sparked the hope that that chapter is not yet closed, that we can be a part of it, that there is more to come.
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Summary: A must read for any pilot, father, brother or son
Review: Whether you're a pilot, brother or son (of which I am all), Flight of Passage will take you on a roller coaster ride of emotion as you fly across the country with the two boys. A must read!
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Summary: Great retrospective on boys and their fathers, their dreams.
Review: Rinker Buck takes the reader back to the tumultuous 60's through the eyes of one innocent and one not-so-innocent teenager. The book retells the daring flight of two boys in 1966 across country in a radioless Piper Cub airplane. As you ride along, the complex interactions between teenage boys and their father is interspersed with the the often surprising events of the trip. Encounters with a myriad of different personalities and problems are openly shared through the gifted writing style of Rinker Buck. The innocence of their travel is contrasted against the complex issues of the times, the relationship with their father and each other. While reading this book, one is flying in another time, another era.
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Summary: A wonderful, readable look; not just about aviation but life
Review: A wonderful, readable book; not just about aviation but a way of life that is all but unattainable to most young people today. I, too, flew out of Somerset Hills when the Buck boys were growing up and it was great to see their enthusiasm and that of all the other youngsters learning to fly there. Joe DuPont has a good suggestion. There should be a monument to the late airport at the entrance to the condominium that now sprawls over the what used to be two grass runways separated by cornfields. And the plaque should read: "Where dreams once became realities."
Thanks, Rink, for helping us remember what once was.
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