Catch-22 is my all time favorite book. So when I learned about The Bridgebusters, it immediately shot to the top of my “Want to Read” list. It has everything to make it a perfect read for me: airplanes, history and Heller. Then I found out about The True Story of Catch-22, written by the daughter of the real Colonel Cathcart, so I daisy-chained right into what turned out to be the Yin for Cleaver’s Yang.

The True Story of Catch-22 is less a history book and more a collection of personal memoirs of the men of Heller’s 488th squadron. As the daughter of the unit’s commanding officer, Meder has a direct and much more personal relationship with the subject and her focus is mapping the novel’s characters to real men fighting a real war, which is a much different story than Bridgebusters, but an equally interesting one, especially with all of the pictures she pulled out of her father’s attic. ( )