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merricatct's review against another edition
3.0
4 stars for the historical content, but 3 stars for the writing, and I always round down when rating. I feel like this book was trying to be both a focused "looking at a big event through the lens of specific person(s)" book and a general scholarly overview of WW2 in general, and as a result, both approaches kind of faltered. There isn't enough depth of detail to fill the latter, and not enough connection to fill the former. I wish this had been marketed as a short history/examination of modern aircraft in American warfare, rather than making it sound like an "Unbroken" type story about specific soldiers. I think it would've been a more successful book that way.
jordaher's review against another edition
5.0
Really informative and, at many moments, horrifying. Author did a great job at trying to stay neutral to the situations and looking through both parties’ eyes.
savyy's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Graphic: Death, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, and War
gracelynmarie's review against another edition
4.0
was for school but i actually enjoyed it more than i thought i would :)
very gruesome so trigger warnings
very gruesome so trigger warnings
tony_t's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
4.5
Essentially an abbreviated history of the air war in the Pacific during WWII. By turns inspiring, informative and depressing this volume is a comprehensive and detailed story which focuses on the tiny island of Chichi Jima, near Iwo Jima. Highly recommended.
Graphic: Torture, Violence, and War
tanyarobinson's review against another edition
3.0
This book is a good example of a project where the author discovered a lot of interesting material that didn't directly deal with his subject, but found a way to insert it in his book anyway. Only about half of Flyboys' pages discussed the 8 American flyboys held by the Japanese at Chichi Jima (and it's pretty gruesome stuff at that). The rest went off on random tangents - the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, eyewitness details about the 1945 Tokyo firebombings, a lengthy discussion about Japan's attempt to enter the world of imperialism after its long period of isolation... All of these topics certainly belong in a larger study of the Pacific War, but I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to what Bradley chose to include and exclude from this little book supposedly about the long-concealed fates of 8 prisoners of war.