Rating: 
Summary: Almost as good as Band of Brothers
Review: Being 17 and an amature WW II historian, books by Ambrose appealed to me a few Christmases ago when my grandfather got a copy of Band of Brothers and a copy of D-Day. I thumbed through them and decided to buy them myself. After reading these, I decided to buy Wild Blue to read on my flight to and from London. After reading it, I didn't find it as interesting as Band of Brothers, which I have seen hte series for. I guess it was because I already knew so much about B-24's and their missions. All-in-all it was a great book, and this is coming from a guy who was forced to read in school and i read these on my own accord. I am currently working on a school project on this book and any informational E-Mails would be greatly appreciated.
I give Wild Blue a 4 out of 5.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as it could have been
Review: This book seems to be a lot like a B-24. It takes a long time to take off, but once it does, it's fairly interesting. I don't mind learning a little about where some of the B-24 airmen came from and the training they went through, but Ambrose throws a long list of airmen, that other than McGovern and his crew you almost never see again. I agree with other reviewers, his other books are much better. I think it would have been more interesting to go into more detail with just McGovern and his crew and avoid some of the other things that slow this book down.
Rating: 
Summary: ....Into The Wild Blue Yonder!
Review: Stephen Ambrose has yet again compiled a masterful book on Worl War II. He takes you into the seat of many different Bomber pilots own expierience of Bombing runs over hostile territories. You will feel like you are actualy there with the pilot, Anti-Aircraft shells blowing up all around you. Hunkering down in your favorite reading chair you will try to make youself as small as possilble to avoid the flak. Holding your breath all the while, hoping that the fatal piece of metal will not come whistling toward you. This is what happened to me when I read this book. Even the boring parts will pull you into this book. If you are a history buff and have not read any Stephen Ambrose books on World War II. You are missing out on the read of your life!
Rating:
Summary: Not up to Ambrose's standards
Review: I am a big Stephen Ambrose fan, and life long student of WW 2 aviation history...unfortunately the two didn't come together in the best way here. Don't get me wrong, it is a decent book, worth reading if you don't know much about B-24's or the 15th AF. For those who do know something about these two subjects however, some rather obvious factual and technical errors are not difficult to pick out. Also he began several other story lines in the beginning of the book about men in training that went to other bomb groups, but he never tied up those stories later in the book.. they were just forgotten about. The fact that he called every McGovern aircraft the "Dakota Queen" even though the name "Dakota Queen" never appeared on ANY of McGovern's aircraft, is kind of mis-leading for researchers. I am happy to see the B-24 get some positive press from such a noted historian, however it falls short of his impressive works on the ground war in Europe and on Lewis and Clark. It comes across as just what it is, a book kind of thrown together as a favor to a friend.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good buy.
Review: I bought Ambrose's The Wild Blue to learn about the 15th Air Force and about the B-24 bomber. I learned much about both. I also learned about the younger George McGovern, who featured in none of the blurbs. A greater concern has to do with the padding of the work. Repetitious accounts, an overly large font, innumerable notes, pages of acknowlegements and bibliography combine to reduce a 300 page publication to some 240 pages of text. I have read other books by Ambrose, D-Day, Citizen Soldiers, Nothing Like It In The World, Undaunted Courage, and been impressed by excellent writing, in-depth research, and good story telling. Not so with The Wild Blue, a book which appears to have more to do with cashing in on Ambrose's name and reputation than anything else.
Rating:
Summary: Kinda long winded
Review: Decent book but it seems to go on a bit too much for me...almost feels like the author dragged it out a bit to fill more pages.
Rating:
Summary: The Wild Blue
Review: I have to agree with a couple of the previous reviews in that this book is mediocre. I had read Band of Brothers and I was hoping that this book was of the same calibre. I think this is more of a tribute to George McGovern but it is still interesting reading. I have found better personal accounts of the war in "A Half Wing and a Prayer". I would recommend looking for some other titles in the same content before buying this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good, Easy Read book
Review: I bought this book after reading other Ambrose books, D-Day, Band Of Brothers, and find it to be an overall good book. This book is similar to Band Of Brothers. One example is that both books focus on one group of people, Band of Brothers, it focuses on Easy company of the 506th regiment, and Wild Blue the crew of the Dakota Queen in the 15th Airforce. Overview of the book: The Wild Blue is primarily about George McGovern and his crew. The Book starts with backgrounds of the crew, than training, and an overview of the 15th Airforce, and then their combat expieriences. This book does a good job of keeping you interested, it is an easy read. It really suprised me when I was finished with the book and thought about the book in whole, that I enjoyed it as much as I did. The book is not Action Packed as Band Of Brothers. In all the 35 missions Mcgovern Flew he didnt see one enemy fighter, so dont expect dog fights. I really learned alot about the b-24s, like it said in the book, the 8th airforce, and their b-17s got much of the credid that the 15, and the b-24s should have got. I would suggest this book to anyone who is interested in WWII, Aviation, or Both. This book can be read by all people. Its easy to read and is informative. Its worth your moneys worth.
Rating:
Summary: Glad to find I'm not the only disappointed reader ...
Review: I read and loved D-Day and Citizen Soldiers, finding them to be informative, attentive to detail, and uncanny in their ability to describe events from the viewpoint of a soldier. I've read a few other Ambrose books since then, and my opinion of him as a historian and author has steadily declined. One has to wonder how a historian, of all authors, can churn out books at the amazing pace of Ambrose. The answer lies in part on tremendous near-verbatim quotations of other sources (sometime even failing to attribute properly those sources), and as The Wild Blue shows, patching together of notes in almost proletarian-level prose to fill up the pages. The Wild Blue could've been so much better, and despite of Ambrose's clunky writing and piecemeal nature of the book's structure, manages to become a decent book if you simply pay attention to the stories of the individual airmen and put yourself in their shoes. However, my criticisms weigh down my appreciation of the men the book is about. First, the writing is perhaps at a 6th grade level; few sentences use punctuation, and few are longer than 10 words. The timeline does not work, skipping from late '44 back to McGovern in college, to mid '43, to early '44, and everywhere else. Third, it is apparent that he and his blessed son Hugh just threw the book together, cutting and pasting transcripts of interviews and then editing those. There is no cohesiveness, no central driving theme of the book, just passages here, there, everywhere, going nowhere. As a quick read, too quick really, the book is an OK surface-level account of a B-24 crew in action over Europe. But unfortunately, the book just comes up short. Its lack of depth, lack of cohesiveness, lack of detail, and lack of mature writing combine to, ahem, "ground it."
Rating: 
Summary: A Mild View of the Air War over Germany
Review: I was with the Eighth Air Force in England and flew bombing missions over Germany in a B-17 in 1943-44. I hoped that Stephen Ambrose would use his excellent command of prose to describe the horror of those missions, whether in a B-24, B-17, Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, or Eighth Air Force in England. But it didn't happen. His description of combat is like sipping a glass of milk, when actual combat is like choking down a glass of tequila. It is probably asking too much of someone who wasn't there, but I didn't get the feeling of intense cold, frozen oxygen masks, altitude sickness, planes exploding around you, boys losing arms, legs, or heads, and men driven mad by fear. In four months of missions, my ten-man crew had five killed and two, including me, wounded. I lost so many friends that I stopped making friends because it hurt too much when I saw them die.
The book is mostly a story of former Senator George McGovern, as he trained and flew a B-24 on bombing missions at the end of the war against Germany. He apparently didn't have to face German fighters coming at him, but he flew many times through the awful box barrages of antiaircraft fire above German cities. I still don't know how any of us survived those.
The book has errors, but what book doesn't? Thus, I'll point out the first one, on the first page of Chapter One and let it go at that. He says, "They were all volunteers. The U.S. Army Air Corps - after 1942 the Army Air Forces - did not force anyone to fly." That is nonsense. Four members of my crew were draftees, and many other combat crews contained draftees. I was headed for a nice, safe job as a ground-based officer, when the Air Force sneakily gave me a flight physical.
Still, it's an enjoyable book. It's low-key and will be welcome if you don't like to read about the blood and gore of combat. I particularly liked learning that, after eating canned Spam for months, a U.S. Senator and candidate for President of the United States grew to hate the stuff as much as I did.
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