Some 28 years after it was originally published in hardback, someone has seen fit to re-run this long out-of-print book, "The Vivid Air," as a paperback.
I believe Flammer originally wrote this as a PhD thesis some years earlier, but it is the only scholarly book I know of ever written on the Lafayette Escadrille - full footnotes, appendices, etc.
Flammer was an Air Force veteran who was able to interview surviving members of the LE in the 1960s and often had access to their personal papers. Though I do have a issues with a few facts in this book, it was the best that could have been done before the invention of the Internet.
Flammer's end notes read as interesting as the book itself and his lists of references has been a true Rosetta Stone / road map for my own research.
Flammer was involved with the old Cross & Cockade issue (Volume 2, #1 Spring 1961) on the Lafayette Escadrille - this book is like an expanded, referenced version of that C&C issue.
Up to know copies of the original printing have been going for upwards of $60. Now you can get a paperback copy for much less: