Alex Kershaw: The Few: The American "Knights of the Air" Who Risked Everything to Fight in the Battle of Britain

By the summer of 1940, World War II had been under way for nearly a year. Buoyed by his successes on the Continent, Hitler was now planning an invasion of England to seal Europe's fate.

Though the United States was still a neutral country, a few Americans decided they could not remain on the sidelines. They joined Britain's Royal Air Force to defend Britain in its darkest hour.

The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of these young Americans who defied their country's neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air." With minimal training but plenty of guts they dueled the skilled pilots of Germany's Luftwaffe in the skies over England, shooting down some of Hitler's most fearsome aces.

By October 1940, these Americans had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation. At war's end some five years later, just one of them would be alive. Winston Churchill once said famously of all those who fought in the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." These daring Americans were "the few" among "the few."

And now, with the narrative drive and human drama that made The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter national bestsellers, Alex Kershaw tells their story for the first time.