" Winner of the Best Aeronautical Book Award from the Reserve Officers Association of the United States "The sky was full of dying airplanes" as American Liberator bombers struggled to return to North Africa after their daring low-level raid on the oil refineries of Ploesti. They lost 446 airmen and 53 planes, but Philip Ardery's plane came home. This pilot was to take part in many more raids on Hitler's Europe, including air cover for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. This vivid firsthand account, available now for the first time in paper, records one man's experience of World War II air...

War hero. Lawyer. U.S. Senate candidate. Horse lover. Farm boy. Fundraiser. To this impressive list add one more role ably filled by Philip Ardery: master storyteller.

Heroes and Horses presents a series of delightful vignettes evoking a way of life almost beyond recall. Bourbon County, the touchstone for Ardery's life, is the center that holds together the tales in the collection. Stories about Ardery's family home, "Rocclicgan," boyhood activities on the farm, and the servants' kitchen gossip paint vivid portraits of a lost time in Kentucky's history.

Though the...