[Ruy Horta]

OK, small update.
Received the book yesterday.

Current Grub Street house style.

c. 160 pages, including claims list.

A couple of b&w profiles, three color profiles on back of dust jacket.

I've now reached p.52

The book is interesting, but not brilliant. One detractor imho, it constantly tries to fit Goerings actions into a psychological profile, and that profile was made during his captivity.

By presenting Goerings actions in the context of this profile - a sort of 20-20 hindsight need to label everything - the biography somehow loses strength.

Kilduff could have just written an objective "pilots" biography of Goerings youth up to his time as a pilot, and given us the choice of a final verdict within the context of his later life.

As such the book reminds me of the novel Blue Max, as it somehow wants to explain how the young man became the later Goering, it has to fit the profile.

Again this is a shame, as without the straightjacket of a psychological profile the reader might not translate many of these actions into this later context. Going a step further if we were to remove the context and transfer the WW1 actions to a nameless pilot we'd possible draw many different conclusions.

So unfortunately the WW1 biography is suffering from the need to place the character of Goering into the context of his Third Reich personality. I think that Kilduff missed an opportunity to break free from that context and concentrate on the context of WW1.

With 2/3 of the book still to go I do think it is a worthwhile read, whatever criticism I might have.

Ruy