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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: 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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Summary: About a dad's gift of acomplishment and courage to his sons.
Review: Kinker Buck's book about his odessy to California from New Jersey is touching to any pilot. Both Kinker and his brother Kernahan were given the best gift they could get.. The gift of adventure and self confidense from their father who encouraged them to make this hope. The were the youngest kids ever to fly across the country! The airport they took off from is no longer. Somerset Hills (Basking Ridge Airport) is no longer and became condos like many airports do. Hopefully those of us who flew out of Basking Ridge Airport will put up a monument to let people know that some time ago people like Rinker and his brother had the opportunity to explore and grow in many ways. Such airports are important for any generation looking for meaning in life.
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