Books: Turn on the Lights

THE MAGNIFICENT MITSCHER (364 pp.)—Theodore Taylor—Norton ($5).

There was nothing outwardly magnificent about Marc Andrew Mitscher, boy or man. A dull student in Oklahoma City schools, he was dropped from Annapolis as a disciplinary problem, got back in only to graduate at the "wooden end of the line." "Pete" Mitscher was already bald and beginning to look wizened when, at 29, he won his wings. Thereafter, throughout the monotonous, between-war years of fitness reports and training procedures, he lived only for naval aviation. As the first U.S. Navy officer assigned to command flying operations from the deck of a ship (the converted...