HistoryJournal.org

I’ve always found the historical figure of Eddie Rickenbacker very interesting. In one person, in one life, he combines a lot of the things that really stir my imagination: aviation (he was the leading U.S. ace in WWI), Indy car racing (he was one of the earliest competitors in the Indy 500), airliners (he was an executive of Eastern Air Lines), and the entrepreneurial spirit (he had other business enterprises, including an automobile company).

Back in Chicago, I have a book about the exploits of Rickenbacker’s 94th Aero Squadron called Hat in the Ring: The Birth of American Air Power in the Great War. I began reading it before coming to Edmonton and thought it was really good. Unfortunately, they don’t have it at local libraries here so I picked up W. David Lewis’s biography (Eddie Rickenbacker: An American Hero in the Twentieth Century) instead.

Lewis, an elderly professor of history, combines years of scholarly experience with a childlike fascination with the figure of Rickenbacker that dates to his youth. He seems to provide a balanced view of the man, revealing his positive and negative qualities.