Airplanes, Women, and Song

Boris Sergievsky's life of high adventure began when he fought as a Russian infantry officer and fighter pilot against Austria-Hungary during WWI, and against the Red Army after the Bolshevik revolution. In 1923, he came to the U.S. and joined Igor Sikorsky's airplane company as chief test pilot. Over the next ten years, Pan American Airways established routes across Latin America and the Pacific, using Sikorsky flying boats. Sergievsky tested them all and flew many of the inaugural flights. Sergievsky dictated this lively and personal memoir in 1934, when he and Charles Lindbergh were about to set eight world's records in a giant Pan American "Clipper". By then, Sergievsky had made pioneering flights across vast stretches of Latin America, carrying everything from mining machinery to boa constrictors. He flew Osa and Martin Johnson across uncharted African jungles, survived a tidal wave that smashed his flying boat in mid-ocean, and escaped a blazing crash when his airplane caught fire in midair. Through it all, his sense of humor remained intact, as did his passion for beautiful women. The editors, who knew Sergievsky well during his later years -- he was Adam Hochschild's uncle -- have written three dozen sidebars to put Sergievsky's memoir in context for today's readers, and to describe his further adventures in the next three decades. More than forty rare photographs enhance the story of Sergievsky's eventful life.