Skunk Works is the story of Lockheed's fabled prototype and black production outfit that produced the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117A stealth fighter among other projects. The Blackbird is a must-see at several air museums today, notably the Smithsonian at Washington's Dulles International Airport.
The accelerated schedules and almost routine technical breakthroughs are a breath of fresh air compared to today's decades-long projects that result in disappointments like the B-2 and F-35.
This book is worth the price just for the summaries of Blackbird training flights: literally coast to coast and border to border and return in less than four hours… leave home in Sacramento, take off about nine am, refuel over the Pacific, fly cross country and north-south, refuel again near Miami, return in time to play tennis before cocktail hour.
Photograph all of North Korea in ten minutes (that’s how they found the USS Pueblo sequestered in a North Korean port.)
And on and on.