Horses Don’t Fly

I found my book by searching key words ‘World War I’ in the Lafayette Library catalog online. One of the first books that popped up was a diary of a World War I soldier so I wrote down the call number and went to that section to look. The section was full of World War I novels, memoirs, and diaries. I did not even find the book I planned on getting because I found this one first; Horses Don’t Fly, a Word War I memoir by Frederick Libby. This book caught my eye at first glance because it was huge and because the title was really unusual. I read the short summary on the back and immediately knew I wanted to write about this book. In class we had talked a little bit about the introduction of new warfare during World War I like chemical warfare and airplanes. This memoir tells the story of Frederick Libby who was “the first pilot to fly the American colors over enemy lines” during World War I (Libby). Although, before joining the US army Libby was part of the Canadian army. The memoir is broken into thirty chapters describing the first twenty-six years of Libby’s life. It talks about his early years as a cowboy in the Old West and then goes on to explain his reasons for joining the war and the experiences and memories of being a pilot during World War I, and finally, his life after returning home from the war. Overall, I believe this book would be a great addition to our current material on World War I and I actually plan on reading it on my own.

Libby, Frederick. Horses Don’t Fly. 2000. Memoir. Print.