SUPERB!! Unexpectedly brilliant! So glad I got this book on a whim during a rare mosey around Foyles. Iftach Spector has written the best military auto-biog and maybe the best auto-biog I've ever read. His writing is at once intimate and warm as he confides in his reader. The early chapters and the dominant thread is obviously about his impressive career as a fighter pilot and later expands on the fascinating events during the wars of 67, 68-70, and 73. Those sections alone would make a very good book. General Spector's originality is the way he expands on his professionalism and integrity through his evolving life-view as he ages. Integrity is the dominant trait that comes across.

His description of how he gradually fell out of step with the strategic thinking with his own radical ideas and exceptional foresight is the beginning of his self-disciplined, and self-respecting 'opposition' - which culminates where the book begins: his signing of the Pilots' Letter to the Israeli Air Force command in late 2003 following the IDF's indiscriminate bombing of a terrorist target in Gaza. I salute him for making that small but important sacrifice.

The chapters come thick and fast as the ace pilot becomes a ground-breaking squadron leader and first class leader of men. A frightening episode on the way to Damascus during the Yom Kippur war is retold breathtakingly. As are countless others - a disastrous dog-fight with the ethereal 'Hasan' over Jabal Druze is edge of your seat stuff, and a virtually fuelless getaway through the wadis of south Sinai is almost unbelievably dramatic right to the last word of the chapter. All the aircraft he flies from the Mystere to the Mirage, the Phantom to the F-16, come alive with their own personalities in the author's thoughtful words.

I was ready to give this book 5 stars before the final chapters, but they just exceeded everything up to here. The reunion evening 20 years after the raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor is incredibly moving, especially the passages about the personal fears and the tragedy of the doomed Columbia astronaut Ilan Ramon. And then, to finish we're taken back to the beginning and the reason he signs the Pilots' Letter. His assessment of where Israel has gone wrong, and why, is spot on, and his proposals for their remedy are exactly how I see it and would want the leaders of Israel to see it. Israel needs men of Iftach Spector's integrity and calibre right at the very top. A great book and a great man. ( )