It was the summer of 1940, and World War II had been raging for nearly a year. Buoyed by his successes on the Continent, Hitler was now planning an invasion of England to seal Europe's fate.

Though the United States was still a neutral country, a few Americans decided they couldn't remain on the sidelines. They joined Britain's Royal Air Force to defend the country - with the future of civilization hanging in the balance.

The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of these Americans who defied their own country's neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air" who, with minimal training but plenty of guts, dueled the skilled and fearsome aces of Germany's Luftwaffe.

By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation. Some five years later, at war's end, just one of them would be alive. Winston Churchill once said famously of all those who fought in the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." These daring Americans were the few among the "few."

Alex Kershaw is the author of the widely acclaimed books The Bedford Boys, The Longest Winter and two biographies: Jack London and, more recently, Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa. He has been a journalist and a screenwriter in Britain and now lives in Bennington, Vermont.