Bernt Balchen: Polar Aviatior

This biography of Bernt Balchen tells the story of an aviation ground-breaker, the first person to fly over both of the poles, whose reputation and military career were undermined by one of his peers. Glines, a retired Air Force colonel and curator of the Doolittle Military Aviation Library at the University of Texas, Dallas, argues that Richard Byrd, a onetime mentor of Balchen, almost single-handedly destroyed Balchen's chance for a promotion to brigadier general and forced his retirement from the Air Force in 1956 at the peak of his technical expertise. This book reestablishes some of the facts that Byrd forced Balchen's publisher to remove from his 1958 biography, and relates in detail the Arctic flights and World War II operations that Balchen flew. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)