William E. Burrows

This seems to be a decent biography and it appears the author did his research before writing. He mentions that some original material was destroyed in WWII. The final chapters deal with the legacy of the Baron and how his memory and actions were used during and after the war. If not for the war it is possible Richthofen never would have flown a plane. The war gave him the opportunity to fly and develop the skills that made him the famed warrior. He was a hunter before he every flew for the first time and he used his knowedge of hunting hone his arial hunting skills.

It is always interesting to note the genuine respect arial enemies had for each other. Frequently their relations were starkly different from the infantry in the trenches.


"The tendancy to compensate for ones deficiencies by sinking them in to the glorious achievements of more furtunate mortals may be an ever-present feature of social life." - Sidney Hook


This book was published in 1969. Significant perhaps because of the social distain to heroes and war during the Vietnam conflict that was taking place at the time. However, there have been anti war movements constantly during the last 100 years and they do not always effect all history or literature publshed in their time periods but certainly may. In this case the back cover talkes about how the German war department looked for someone they could glorify to keep up moral with the war effort going poorly and they selected Richtofen. It is possible to overglorify war or those that do heroic things during war. It is highly possible that the Baron would not have had the legendary status he has retained for so long had he not died during the conflict and been remembered as a martyr.
… (mere)

The Infinite Journey written by Willam E. Burrows tells of the history of many NASA missions into space. It has several reports of astronauts and engineers, which is awesome because it lets the reader get a feeling of what it was like and a sense of the ergency of some of the problems or emergencies that occured. However the book has an average reading level of a 9th grader but there are so many perspectives that the book is really all over the place. Between the narative and the actual accounts of the astronauts there is a huge jump in reading level and can be some what confusing. In the sense of the quality of the book though, I would give it an B+.… (mere)