Bidspirit auction | Fate is the Hunter by

Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann. Simon & Schuster, 1961. Paperback. memoir by aviation writer Ernest K. Gann. It describes his years working as a pilot from the 1930s to 1950s, starting at American Airlines in Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s when civilian air transport was in its infancy, moving onto wartime flying in C-54s, C-87s, and Lockheed Lodestars, and finally at Matson Navigation's short-lived upstart airline and various post-World War II ”nonscheduled” airlines in Douglas DC-4s.On its publication, in reviewing the book, Martin Caidin wrote that Gann's reminiscences ”stand excitingly as individual chapter-stories, but the author has woven them superbly into a lifetime of flight.” Roger Bilstein, in a history of flight, says that of books that discuss airline operations from the pilot's point of view, ”few works of this genre equal E. K. Gann's 'Fate Is the Hunter,' which strikingly evokes the atmosphere of air transport flying during the 1930s.” In 2019, playwright David Mamet, a pilot himself, wrote that Fate Is the Hunter is ”the best book written about aviation”.