The Pinnacle: A Memoir

In Bingaman’s stellar memoir, his boyish obsession with flight blossoms into a grueling but rewarding career in the U.S. military, leading him into the uncertainties of war. Bingaman returns to his Iowa roots in this collection of anecdotes, reminiscences and close calls among fighter pilots and their peers. Recounting first his time in England as an American airman in a NATO squadron, the narrative covers his time in Oregon, the Midwest and Vietnam, detailing the operations—particularly the idiosyncrasies and frustrations—of military programs and the officers that oversaw them. Well-paced and written in economical prose, Bingaman’s retelling of his past is at once richly personal and broadly historical, sacrificing neither breadth nor depth to convey specific bits of information as well as the zeitgeist of the time. A sensitive, astute contribution to the history of the armed forces. —Kirkus Review