Beryl Markham's 'West With the Night'. She was the first person (male or female) to fly solo, against the prevailing winds, across the Atlantic ocean. It is the best book I have ever read, aviation or not. There is some discrepancy on whether or not Beryl wrote it herself, but either way it is amazingly written.
This is a letter written about it to maxwell perkins....
"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But (she) can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard other people's stories, are absolutely true...I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book."
I am not usually one who cares about reviews on the back of books, but that was a letter to Mr. perkins written by Ernest Hemingway.
