Christmas reading list: 24 books for pilots to read in 2024

Back in 2018, I shared a list of 18 good aviation books, in the hopes that Air Facts readers might find a Christmas gift for the pilot on their list (or for themselves). Books are a great way to learn about aviation history and improve your flying skills, not to mention give your mind a welcome break. Six years ago I wrote, “As social media and cable TV deteriorate into ill-informed shouting matches, I find myself reading more and more books.” All I can say is: some things never change.

I still hate social media and I still love books, so I’m back with more recommendations—24 good aviation books for 2024. This is an eclectic mix, so I don’t expect readers to love every suggestion, but I believe there’s something for pilots to learn from almost any book, even if it doesn’t relate to aviation directly. These aren’t “the best” 24 aviation books or even my favorite, just two dozen I’ve read over the last few years that made me think about flying in a new way.

I’ve organized my recommendations into six categories. As always, I welcome your suggestions at the end.

History

Reading about aviation history is fun, but I also think it can make you a better pilot. Understanding how certain rules were created or why technology evolved the way it did adds context and nuance to your aviation knowledge. If nothing else, it certainly makes you appreciate the luxuries we have today, like GPS and datalink weather.

Was the Zeppelin doomed from the start? Hardly.

Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World; by Alexander Rose. It seems obvious now that airplanes would win out over airships, but as Rose describes in this excellent book, it was hardly a foregone conclusion. The ambition of Hugo Eckener (the leading proponent of airships) and Juan Trippe (Pan Am’s founder and a key airplane booster) was astonishing, as was the world they built in the 1920s and the legacy they both left behind. Packed with incredible scenes—repairing a damaged Zeppelin by crawling out to the tail thousands of feet over the North Atlantic; building an island in the South Pacific to service flying boats—it’s one of my favorite books of any genre in recent years.

The Great Air Race: Glory, Tragedy, and the Dawn of American Aviation; by John Lancaster. A fascinating look at early American aviation, this page-turner tells the long-forgotten story of the first transcontinental air race, held in 1919. The airplanes were almost comically unreliable (54 crashed), the pilots were fearless bordering on reckless (nine died), and the weather conditions were occasionally treacherous, but the event jump-started aviation after World War I. Lancaster is a private pilot, making him the perfect guide for this trip across the US. (I interviewed Lancaster last year for my podcast.)

The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight; by Winston Groom. You might assume you know these stories, but you probably don’t know as much as you think you do. Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump, knows how to write, and he shares the literally unbelievable life stories of three famous aviators—Eddie Rickenbacker alone escaped death more times than seems possible. All three men played a critical role in creating the aviation industry we all participate in today, from attitude indicators to airline route structures.

With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain; by Michael Korda. Thoughtful and deeply researched but never academic, this is simply a great read about a pivotal moment in aviation history. The focus is on the operations, and the flying in particular, which is no surprise considering Korda served in the RAF at one point (although not as a pilot). After reading this book it’s hard not to agree with Churchill: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon; by Robert Kurson. There are hundreds of books on the Apollo program and the United States’ race to the moon, but this one makes you feel like you’re one of the astronauts. Most Americans know the story of Apollo 11 and 13 well, but Kurson makes the case that Apollo 8 was every bit as important. He also shows how much the early space program was an extension of the aviation world, and how concepts like situational awareness and crew resource management were adapted for space (although nobody called them by those names in 1968).

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space; by Adam Higginbotham. Here’s another topic where it seems impossible to say anything new, but Higgenbotham (author of the riveting Midnight in Chernobyl) manages to do just that. I read this book not long after reading Rocket Men, and while it made for a sad bookend to America’s great space age, Challenger is still packed with lessons for pilots: normalization of deviance, risk management, decision making under pressure, systems knowledge, and so much more play a key role in the story.  It’s a page-turner.

Learning to fly

For prospective pilots, there is nothing like reading a firsthand account of flight training to answer questions and allay concerns. For current pilots, reading such a book can evoke nostalgia and maybe even gratitude. Here are two refreshingly smart books on the process of learning to fly.

One of the more thoughtful books on the flight training process.

Cleared for the Option: A Year Learning to Fly; by Patrick Chovanec. Countless student pilots have cataloged their flight training ups and downs, but Chovanec (an economist by training) does it better than most. Much more than a collection of “there I was” moments, he offers detailed sections on flight simulators, regulations, and navigation, making it a surprisingly interesting book for licensed pilots. He also talks frankly about the emotional roller coaster of learning to fly and how to manage reluctant family members. (I interviewed Chovanec last year for my podcast.)

Mullane’s Guide to Learning to Fly: Deep Dives into Select Topics for Today’s Student Pilot; by Patrick Mullane. Finally, a book that dispenses with the feel good platitudes and describes flying the way it really is: frustrating, expensive, but also life-changing. Mullane, an engineer and the son of an astronaut, mixes in depth discussions of aerodynamics with irreverent commentary, like when he writes, “I know of no other industry where the young teach the ‘old’ on such a large scale.” It’s all strangely inspiring. (I interviewed Mullane and his father in 2022 for my podcast.)

Technology

How to adapt the role of the pilot to meet ever more advanced avionics is perhaps the topic of discussion in modern flight training. This can quickly devolve into rants about “children of the magenta line,” which solves nothing. These four books offer something different: thought-provoking and practical suggestions for using technology wisely.

Pilot Competency and Capability: Responsibilities, Strategy, and Command; by Steven Green. This is not a breezy beach read, with its long digressions on complexity theory and numerous academic citations, but it’s one of the most interesting aviation books I’ve ever read. Steve Green, a longtime Air Facts contributor and retired airline captain, has written a manifesto for modern airline pilots. They should be neither mindless button-pushers nor old school aces; rather, their job is to “manage uncertainty by protecting the margins.” It’s a simple idea, but brilliantly explored. If you’re looking for something unashamedly highbrow and interdisciplinary, this is it. (I interviewed Green last year for my podcast.)

Automation Airmanship: Nine Principles for Operating Glass Cockpit Aircraft; by Christopher Lutat and S. Ryan Swah. Another fairly dense and academic book, this is nonetheless an important contribution to the debate about manual flying skills. Written by two experienced airline pilots and based on rigorous research, it focuses on practical habits for safer flying and suggests changes that need to be made during pilot training. As Lutat and Swah write early in the book, “we are attempting not to redefine airmanship as much as to update its practice wherever automation factors into its execution.” Amen. (I interviewed Lutat recently for my podcast.)

An experienced airline captain prevented disaster—what should we learn?

QF32; by Richard de Crespigny. When Qantas Flight 32, an Airbus A380 with nearly 500 people on board, landed safely in Singapore after losing an engine shortly after takeoff, most people assumed this was a fairly simple emergency scenario. This book shows how wrong that assumption was, walking through each step of the catastrophic engine explosion and how the crew managed to avoid disaster. While the crew’s actions are inspiring (the author seems to have dropped in from central casting as the right man for the job), the technology overload they faced should make pilots think. A practical application of some themes from Green and Lutat.

The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast; by Andrew Blum. This book is not aimed specifically at pilots, but there are numerous insights that changed how I think about weather. Blum traces the history of weather forecasts, focusing on how weather models were invented and improved over time, plus the role of supercomputers. Perhaps his most encouraging takeaway is that forecasts have become extremely accurate: the typical four-day forecast is now more accurate than a one-day forecast three decades ago.

Risk and thinking

Seven books in this category and none of them are really about airplanes? Yes, this might seem like overkill, but I think this topic deserves the attention. Simply put, pilots need to spend more time thinking about thinking. Lots of flight instructors talk about this, but usually in a way that sucks all the nuance (and fun) out of the subject. These books take risk management and decision making out of that checklist and formula world, and in the process make it much more meaningful.

The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t; by Julia Galef. This book probably could have been a long article instead of a book, but the idea is so important that I’m willing to overlook that. Galef makes a compelling case for a new approach to decision-making, one that’s based on what she calls the scout mindset: “the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.” It’s a simple concept but one most people avoid using. Consider a scud-running pilot, who is probably focusing on the one good METAR while ignoring all the bad ones. There are many other aviation questions—Am I proficient? Is that crosswind too strong? Can I get on top of those clouds?—that should be approached with the scout mindset.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction; by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. A foundational work in the world of decision science, this book starts with an unavoidable fact: humans are awful at making predictions, and in fact the smartest people are often the worst. After crushing your confidence, the authors then explain how to get better, and fortunately this requires neither advanced degrees nor fancy technology. The key is to track your predictions, seek out data from varied sources, and then think probabilistically. It sounds complicated but it’s not, and this approach works just as well for pilots doing preflight weather briefings as it does for generals or doctors.

Good decisions don’t always require complicated processes.

Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions; by Gerd Gigerenzer. Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize by telling people to think more systematically and rely less on their gut feel (his famous “system 1 and system 2” approach). Gigerenzer isn’t so sure, and presents compelling evidence that your gut feel is all you need for smart decisions, at least in certain situations. I found this approach perfectly suited to the cockpit, and the goal of becoming “risk savvy” is a worthy one for pilots. Gigerenzer’s statistics on cancer screening alone make this book worth reading—I had to put the book down a few times to check his math.

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes—But Some Do; by Matthew Syed. Here’s an example of an author applying an aviation concept (the flight data recorder, or ”black box” as the media inevitably calls it) to the wider world, and while Syed’s mainstream examples are compelling it also serves as a great reminder for pilots. There is no perfect flight, and pilots must be humble enough to admit that and learn from every mistake, both the ones they have personally made and the ones from long ago in aviation history. In fact, it’s that habit of critical self-reflection that has made the airline safety record shockingly good. This book occasionally strays into pop psychology, but the overall message is essential.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets; by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The author has a reputation for being idiosyncratic (bordering on crazy), but this book is justifiably famous. Thoughtful, contrarian, but utterly readable, Fooled by Randomness explains the concept of skewed distributions in a way that is directly applicable to flying. As Taleb writes, “You can be risk loving and yet completely averse to ruin.” That is, you can and should take calculated risks, but a fatal accident is not just a little worse than a non-fatal one; it ends the possibility of all future flights. Another book that will make you stop and think.

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk; by Peter Bernstein. While this book is focused on investing, the larger story of risk and humankind’s response to it has much to offer pilots. In contrast to the formulaic and bland treatment it gets from the FAA, Bernstein is a brilliant guide to a complicated subject. His book is now nearly 30 years old, so a few examples are dated, but the basic insights are timeless: “The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome and the linkage between effect and cause is hidden from us.” Tell that to the examiner on your next checkride.

The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing; by Michael Mauboussin. Your last flight was safe and unventful—are you a great pilot or did you just get lucky? This book helps answer questions like that, explaining why some domains require more skill (which means you should trust your gut instinct) and some domains require more luck (which means you should be skeptical of how much control you have). Mauboussin is one of the most original and entertaining writers in the finance world, and I would recommend almost anything he writes.

Fiction

OK, that was pretty heavy reading. If you’re looking for some lighter fare, a novel with a flying twist is always a great option. While aviation fiction can be hit or miss for me, these two recent books were entertaining stories and managed to get enough flying details correct to keep me reading.

An award-winning novel that’s (mostly) about flying.

Great Circle; by Maggie Shipstead. This was a bestseller in 2021 and a finalist for the Booker Prize, so I initially wrote it off as too “literary” for my taste. After multiple friends recommended it, I gave it a try and I’m glad I did—while some plot twists are predictable and a few of the flying scenes stretch credulity, it’s a great story with plenty of fascinating aviation details. Great Circle traces the life of Marian Graves (who is reminiscent of Amelia Earhart), as she learns to fly in Prohibition-era Montana, then chases her dreams literally across the world. Shipstead writes beautifully, and weaves together a modern day Hollywood plotline along the way.

The Prince of the Skies; Antonio Iturbe. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is on the Mount Rushmore of aviation writers, so anything related to him gets my attention. This 2021 novel is inspired by the life of Saint-Ex and his friends; while it never quite matches the magic of Wind, Sand and Stars, it is a fun read with some deep meditations on what it means to be a pilot and a writer. It’s also a reminder of the incredible bravery of early air mail pilots, who flew primitive airplanes into terrible conditions.

Special mention

Finally, a grab bag of books that inform the flying mindset. None of these are really about flying, but I found myself thinking about airplanes while reading each of them. If you’re looking for something different, these are for you.

Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Stores Hall. I read this book years ago, when it was a quirky ebook by an unknown scientist; since then it has become something of a cult classic in Silicon Valley and has recently become available in hardback from Stripe Press. Hall spends a lot of time talking about actual flying cars, but it’s really an examination of technological progress in America and the factors that slow it down or prevent it completely. Thought-provoking, literate, and occasionally strange, Where Is My Flying Car? is an essential read for anyone interested in the new generation of eVTOL aircraft.

The Great Railway Bazaar; by Paul Theroux. Legendary for both his erudition and his curmudgeonly attitude, Theroux is the perfect guide on this fascinating (and occasionally frightening) journey through Asia by train. While there isn’t an airplane to be found, the lessons on how to travel intelligently and approach the world with wonder are just as applicable to pilots in 2024 as they were to train passengers in 1973. If nothing else, he reminds us to stop and look around—something to remember on your next fuel stop in the middle of nowhere.

Why Travel Matters: A Guide to the Life-Changing Effects of Travel; by Craig Storti. Ignore the subtitle that reeks of self-help; this is a sensible book that will inspire any pilot to be a little more intentional about their next trip. Storti, an earnest but witty writer, clearly describes the difference between mere tourism and truly meaningful travel. Like Theroux, he argues that a great trip is all about your mindset and not your destination. I felt the urge to plan a long cross-country flight as soon as I’d finished the book.

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John Zimmerman

Coming from an aviation family, John grew up in the back of small airplanes and learned to fly as a teenager. Ever since, he has been hooked on anything with wings and regularly flies a Citabria, a Pilatus PC-12, and a Cirrus SR22. He is an ATP and also holds ratings for multiengine, seaplanes, gliders, and helicopters. In addition to being Editor-in-Chief of Air Facts, John is the President of Sporty’s.

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