Richard Bach Biography and latest books by Richard Bach

Richard David Bach (born 23 June 1936 in Oak Park, Illinois) is a popular American writer. He is widely known as the celebrated author of the hugely popular 1970s best-sellers titled, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, and others. His books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance. He claims to be a direct descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is noted for his love of flying and for his books related to air flight and flying in a metaphorical context. He has pursued flying as a hobby since the age of 17.

Life and work
Richard attended Long Beach State College in 1955. He has authored numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970), Illusions (1977), One (1989), and Out of My Mind (1999). Most of his books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalized events from his life to put forward his philosophy.

He served in the United States Navy Reserve, then later in the New Jersey Air National Guard\'s 108th Fighter Wing, 141st Fighter Squadron (USAF) as a F-84F pilot. Afterwards, he worked a variety of jobs, including technical writer for Douglas Aircraft and contributing editor for Flying magazine. He served in the USAF reserve deployed in France in 1960. Most of his books involve flight in some way, from the early stories which are straightforwardly about flying aircraft, to Stranger to the Ground, his first book, to his later works, in which he used flight as a philosophical metaphor.

In 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food after the manuscript was turned down by many publishers. The book, which included unique photos of seagulls in flight by photographer Russell Munson, became a number-one bestseller. The book contained fewer than 10,000 words, yet it broke all hardcover sales records since Gone with the Wind. It sold more than 1,000,000 copies in 1972 alone.

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, published in 1977, tells the story of the narrator\'s encounter with a modern-day messiah who has decided to quit.

Bach in one of his interviews states: I think it\'s (the success is) not because I\'m unusual but because I\'m so much like everybody else. Turns of life that fascinate me fascinate a lot of people. There is a family of us who have this yearning for a kind of excellence that we can manifest every day of our lives, a family who wants to believe we\'re not pawns, we\'re not victims on this planet, that knows we have the power within us here and now to change the world we see around us! One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we\'ve been wishing to lead ourselves.

Personal life…
Bach had six children with his first wife, Bette. Bette typed and edited most of Richard\'s aviation writings. They divorced in 1970, because Richard didn\'t believe in marriage anymore. Bette Bach Fineman, who remarried, is also a pilot, and the author of Patterns, a book about her life as a pilot and single mother. Their son, Jonathan, is a software engineer and  a journalist, who wrote Above the Clouds about growing up without knowing his father; and then later meeting him (Richard) as a college student. Other children are Robert, a commercial airline pilot; Kristel; James Bach, a computer expert and writer; and Erika. His youngest daughter, Bethany, was killed in an accident at the age of fifteen in 1985.

In 1977 Bach married actress Leslie Parrish whom he met during the making of the Jonathan Livingston Seagull movie that was based on his book. She was a major element in two of his subsequent books—The Bridge Across Forever and One—which primarily focused on their relationship and Bach\'s concept of soulmates. They divorced in 1999. Bach married his third wife, Sabryna Nelson-Alexopoulos in April 1999.