Falling into Literature: The Ultimate Guide to Books on Skydiving
Discover the best books about skydiving, from memoirs to technical manuals and fictional works. Explore the history of skydiving in literature.
If you only read one skydiving book, make it Above All Else by Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld (2011). It’s a true story about a top competitive jumper who nearly died in a plane crash and came back to win world titles. If you want to learn how a parachute actually flies, read Brian Germain’s The Parachute and Its Pilot. If you want the history, read Joe Kittinger’s Come Up and Get Me. Every book below was checked against publisher, library or bookseller records. A lot of the “skydiving book lists” floating around online name books that don’t exist.
Memoirs and true stories
Above All Else, by Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld (Skyhorse, 2011)
The full subtitle tells you what you’re getting: A World Champion Skydiver’s Story of Survival and What It Taught Him About Fear, Adversity, and Success. In 1992 Brodsky-Chenfeld was on a jump plane that crashed and killed 16 people, several of them his teammates. He spent about six weeks in a coma with a broken neck and a fractured skull.
He went back to the sport. In 1994 he co-founded Arizona Airspeed, the formation skydiving team based at Skydive Arizona in Eloy, and he went on to win six world championships with its four-way and eight-way teams. The book is less about the crash than about how he handled fear afterward. That’s what makes it useful even if you never plan to jump.
Come Up and Get Me, by Joe Kittinger and Craig Ryan (University of New Mexico Press, 2010)
Kittinger is the Air Force officer who rode a balloon gondola to 102,800 feet on August 16, 1960 and stepped off. He fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds and hit about 614 mph before his main canopy opened. This autobiography covers that jump, the balloon test programs around it, and his time as a fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam.
If you want the story as it was told back then, look for The Long, Lonely Leap (E. P. Dutton, 1961), which Kittinger wrote with Martin Caidin the year after the jump. It’s out of print, but used copies are easy to find.
The Pre-Astronauts, by Craig Ryan (Naval Institute Press, 1995)
This is the wider history behind Kittinger’s leap. It covers the manned balloon flights of the 1950s and early 1960s, when the Air Force and Navy were sending men to the edge of space in open gondolas to find out whether people could survive up there. It’s a good pick for readers who care more about the science and the risk-taking than about the sport.
Band of Brothers, by Stephen E. Ambrose (1992)
Not a sport skydiving book, but it’s the best-known account of military parachuting there is. It follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne from jump training through D-Day and the rest of World War II. Read it if you want to understand where round-canopy static-line jumping came from.
Fiction with skydiving at the center
There’s less real skydiving fiction than the online lists suggest. Two that check out:
Sky Blues, by Vicki Hendricks (2002)
A noir thriller set around a South Florida drop zone. A young veterinarian falls for a skydiving instructor, gets hooked on jumping and on him, and ends up tangled in illegal lion cubs and a murder plot. Hendricks is a skydiver herself, with more than 450 jumps, so the jump scenes read right. It’s an adult book in every sense.
DropZone, by Andy McNab (2009)
A teen thriller from the former SAS soldier turned author, built around a young skydiver who gets pulled into a crime story.
A note on movies: Drop Zone (1994, with Wesley Snipes) and Point Break (1991) are films, not novels. Some lists mix them in as books.
Manuals and technical books
These are the ones skydivers actually keep on the shelf.
The Parachute and Its Pilot: The Ultimate Guide for the Ram-Air Aviator, by Brian Germain
First published in 2004, now in a fifth edition (2014). Germain designs parachutes and teaches canopy courses. The first half explains how a ram-air canopy flies, from basic turns and flares up through competition-style approaches. The second half covers the mental side: fear, ego, and visualization. It’s written for jumpers who have their license and want to fly their canopy better, not for people who haven’t jumped yet.
Parachuting: The Skydiver’s Handbook, by Dan Poynter and Mike Turoff (Para Publishing)
The standard all-in-one handbook for decades, updated through many editions. It covers training, gear, packing, licenses, and the different disciplines. Get a recent edition. Gear and training methods have changed a lot, and an old copy will show you equipment nobody jumps anymore.
The Parachute Manual, by Dan Poynter
Poynter’s technical work on parachute construction, inspection and repair, written for riggers. It’s dense and you don’t need it to learn to jump. It’s worth tracking down if you’re curious about how a rig is built or thinking about a rigger rating.
Free references you should read first
Two of the most useful skydiving texts cost nothing:
- USPA Skydiver’s Information Manual (SIM). The United States Parachute Association’s rulebook and training guide. It lays out the student program, license requirements, emergency procedures, and weather and gear rules. It’s free to read online or as a PDF on USPA’s site, and every U.S. student works from it.
- FAA Parachute Rigger Handbook. The government’s handbook on parachute systems, packing and inspection. It’s a free download from the FAA’s handbooks page.
Where to start
- Thinking about a first jump? Read Above All Else for the mindset, then skim the student section of the SIM so you know what training looks like.
- Already a student or newly licensed? Get The Parachute and Its Pilot before you downsize your canopy.
- Into history? Read Come Up and Get Me, then The Pre-Astronauts.
- Want a story? Sky Blues for adults, DropZone for teens.
Before you buy a book from a list like this one, look it up on Open Library or Goodreads. If you can’t find an author, publisher and year, the book probably doesn’t exist.
Photo by Manuel-H on Pixabay.