$65 CHINA'S WINGS -. Greg Crouch, Bantam Books New York, 2012, 500 page VG+ hardback 1st edn., VG+ jacket, B&W plates, maps,
CHINA'S WINGS, Greg Crouch, Bantam Books New York, 2012, 500 page VG+ hardback 1st edn., VG+ jacket, B&W plates, maps, From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China's Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight. At the center of the maelstrom is the book's courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation's flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. $65
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