Eye of the Viper

Every year, 1,000 fresh potential pilots undergo the intensive, six-month, 58-flight, $2 million-a-head fighter pilot basic training, where they are pushed to the extreme limits, propelled by the desire to earn their place in a warrior subculture. From the investigative

science and medical writer, Peter A. Aleshire, comes Eye of the Viper, an intriguing book about the making of an F-16 fighter pilot.

Blending intense human drama with a wealth of information about the world's most expensive, deadly, high-tech Air Force, the book follows a batch of fresh new recruits at Luke Air Force Base, the world's largest fighter wing and the single most important source of fighter pilots that have made the American Air Force virtually unchallenged in the skies, as they experience the exhaustive six-month training process. Get an insider's look at how these rookies face mental and physical demands, exhilaration and failure, joy and pain, sweat and tears while they are transformed into stealthy, fierce, American fighting machines. Each recruit is eager to climb into the jets they love at a moment's notice and fly halfway around the world to drop laser-guided bombs down any smokestack the president specifies. However, only a few select individuals have what it takes to be dubbed "protectors of national security." The stakes are high and only a few will succeed.

Historian and writer Peter Aleshire is a senior lecturer in the Department

of American Studies at Arizona State University West. He is contributing

editor at Phoenix Magazine and writes frequently for a variety of

magazines. He has written four history books about the Apache Wars in the

Southwest, including The Fox and the Whirlwind, Reaping the Whirlwind,

Warrior Woman, and Cochise. He spent 18 years as a science, medical and

investigative reporter at various newspapers before taking up teaching,

freelancing and writing in 1991. He has published hundreds of articles in

national and regional magazines, which have won numerous awards.