FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Page & Palette will host author James Noles on Thursday, Sept. 10. He will be speaking and signing copies of “Mighty By Sacrifice” at the downtown Fairhope bookstore, from 6-8 p.m.

Subtitled “The Destruction of an American Bomber Squadron, August 29, 1944,” the book was recently published and will be available for purchase at this author appearance.

“Mighty by Sacrifice” tells the story of an ill-fated B-17 mission to bomb an oil refinery and railroad marshaling yard in Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia in 1944. The 20th Squadron, Second Bombardment Group, dispatched seven bombers to participate in the raid.

All seven, however, were shot down by German fighters. The book focuses on several of the airmen on this mission, thereby providing a remarkable personal window into the Allies’ Combined Bomber Offensive at its height during WWII.

In a microcosm, their stories encapsulate how the U.S. Army Air Force built, trained and employed one of the mightiest war machines ever seen. Their stories also illustrate, however, the terrible cost in lives demanded by that same machine.

The title, Noles explains, comes from a line in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Islanders,” which reads in part, “Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise. Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice.”

The book, which Noles co-authored with his father, has already garnered high praise in academic circles.

“This is a great story that deserves to be told,” said Stephen L. McFarland, the coauthor of “To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942–1944.”

"The authors do such a wonderful job of relating the terror and speed of aerial combat.”

“Mighty by Sacrifice” complements Noles’ earlier effort with the University of Alabama Press, 2004’s “Twenty-Three Minutes to Eternity: The Final Voyage of the Escort Carrier USS Liscome Bay.”

Noles, an attorney in private practice with the law firm of Balch & Bingham in Birmingham, is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and the University of Texas School of Law.

He is also the author of “A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America — One State Quarter at a Time,” which is currently available at Page & Palette.

Call (251) 928-5295.