This book celebrates the Hurricane through pictures and stories. Photographs of the airplanes and their pilots in action, many previously unpublished, taken from the collections of the Imperial War Museums and the Royal Air Force Museum are complemented by Paul Gallico’s story of the plane and its pilots. Built around firsthand accounts, Gallico’s narrative brings to life the experience of getting into the cockpit and taking to the sky, knowing that danger and even death might await, but that all of England was counting on you. The result is an unforgettable book, a celebration of mechanical innovation and human bravery.

The Hawker Hurricane, the Royal Air Force's workhorse fighter through most of WWII, gets a gushing, misty-eyed tribute here from novelist Paul Gallico. Even when I read this as a teenager I had the sense that he was overstating his case . . . and yet his love for this grand old plane (a bit of a plowhorse beside the thoroughbred Supermarine Spitfire) is so palpable that it's hard not to be caught up in it.