About twenty years ago I found Robert Shea's Shike books on dads bookshelf.

An utterly riveting read, but sadly out of print for a very long time.

Quite by chance I wanted to see if it was available as an epub, and it turns out his son released it under Creative Commons license.

Go read it. Now!

http://www.manybooks.net/titles/shearother08shike.html