About the book: 1960 / The name of the book’s author, American test pilot Frank Everest, is often found in the foreign aviation press. Lieutenant Colonel Everest is no stranger to aviation. In 1941, at the age of 21, he received his civil pilot's certificate and entered military flight school that same year. In 1942, Everest was already with the rank of second lieutenant. Six months later, the young fighter pilot goes to the front in North Africa and participates in the expulsion of Rommel from there and in the invasion of Italy. Over the course of a year, he made about a hundred combat missions, first as an ordinary pilot and then as a squadron commander. After leave at the end of 1944, Everest was sent to the Sino-Burmese-Indian theater of war, fighting the Japanese. Six months later, his plane was shot down, and Everest ended the war in captivity of the Japanese. After returning to his homeland, Everest became a military test pilot in 1946 and over the next ten years conducted many complex aircraft tests. For five years, Everest was the head of the flight test center at Edwards Air Force Base, that is, he was the chief test pilot of the US Air Force. He flew on 122 aircraft of various types and purposes. In terms of the number of flights on aircraft with rocket engines, Everest is the second pilot in the United States after Charles Eager. In addition to conducting a large number of flight tests of combat aircraft on various topics, the author made a number of one-of-a-kind test and research flights on experimental X-1 and X-2 aircraft, designed to achieve record speeds and flight altitudes. Everest talks about all this in his book “The Man Who Flew the Fastest.” The chapters related to the author’s flight test work are of greatest interest, and they occupy most of the book..