Angels in the Sky is the exhil­a­rat­ing account of a rag­tag band of vol­un­teer air­men from around the world who fought for Israel dur­ing the war of inde­pen­dence. They arrived from Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, Britain, France, and South Africa. Almost all were World War II com­bat vet­er­ans. Many, but not all, were Jew­ish, and many know­ing­ly vio­lat­ed their nation’s embar­goes on the ship­ment of arms and air­craft to Israel. They smug­gled in Messer­schmitt fight­ers from Czecho­slo­va­kia, paint­ing over swastikas with Israeli stars. They flew British-built Spit­fires and Amer­i­can Mus­tangs, risk­ing their lives for a right­eous cause. Sur­round­ed by Egypt­ian, Jor­dan­ian, Iraqi, Syr­i­an and Lebanese forces, Israel would have been crushed with­out the air sup­port pro­vid­ed by the ​“angels in the sky.” Briskly writ­ten and based on first-per­son inter­views and exten­sive archival research, here is a mod­ern-day David-and-Goliath tale and pop­u­lar his­to­ry at its best.