Flyboys: A True Story of Courage

Rating:
Summary: Huge disappointment
Review: When I saw this book at the store I eagerly bought it becuase I had enjoyed the author's previous work Flags of Our Fathers so much. What a terrible dissappointment this new book is. The PC revisionist history, lecturing tone and moral equivocation at its worst made me put this book down after having only read a quarter of it. I haven't returned a book for a refund in many years, and I'm happy my bookseller would take it back.

The reviews below pretty well describe the spit in the eye this book is to our efforts in WWII so I won't elaborate. Perhaps Bradley was emboldened by the success of his first book (which had a co-writer) and felt he could now lecture us all on how terrible our country is. I wonder if the many vets he interviewed knew he was going to write a book like this, or whether he simply duped them. It's fortunate that most Pacific vets of WWII, including my father, are not around anymore to read this thing.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading title, disappointment after Flags Of Our Fathers.
Review: A lot of detailed reviews are already written but I thought I'd approach mine from a more concise standpoint. First off, I should mention I bought Flyboys without hesitation because Bradley writes so well and "Flags" was so good...I bought Flyboys simply due to the author and title. Perhaps if I'd looked more into what the book contained, I would have decided against buying it and not be writing such a review. But the flipside is had I looked into it, I would have concluded that the title was somewhat misleading which I feel is worth mentioning potential buyers.

I think it's fair to say that only part of the book was really about actual Flyboys and the true story of their courage. Bradley seemed stuck betwen teaching history, the Japanese military mindset and describing the journey of a small group of American aviators. One aspect certainly had to do with the other but the history lesson was incomplete and the whole affair felt a bit disjointed. Also, I went into this book with an open mind but it was hard not to conclude that it was tinged with a degree of bias and political correctness in favor of Japan's role in WW2. It's not that his reporting wasn't insightful rather it was a case of what was left out (while other issues were overstressed) that bothered me and led me to start thinking about the bias etc. issue.

That said, Bradley still writes very well and there are interesting things to learn, and the actual "Flyboys" chapters featuring the US aviators I mentioned are hard to put down. That is what Bradley does so well but unfortunately it has to share space with non-flyboy parts of the book. And to round it all off, again I will say that it would be very tough to equal an accomplishment like Flags Of Our Fathers.

Lastly, it's just one opinion!