On its publication, in reviewing the book, Martin Caidin wrote that Gann's reminiscences "stand excitingly as individual chapter-stories, but the author has woven them superbly into a lifetime of flight.

"[1] Roger Bilstein, in a history of flight, says that of books that discuss airline operations from the pilot's point of view, "few works of this genre equal E. K. Gann's 'Fate Is the Hunter,' which strikingly evokes the atmosphere of air transport flying during the 1930s.

In his autobiography, A Hostage to Fortune, Gann wrote, "They obliged and as a result I deprived myself of the TV residuals, a medium in which the film played interminably.

"[4] The plot of Gann's fictional book The High and the Mighty bears some resemblance to one of the true stories in Fate Is the Hunter.

However, Gann was eager to begin his vacation the next day and flew at a higher than expected airspeed, holding the elevator in place.