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laura_litandflicks's review against another edition
4.0
Reading about these amazing young Americans whose lives were cut short is sad. The book is tough to read and even graphic in some places, describing beheadings and mutilations of American POWs. It is easy to lose hope in the goodness of humans while reading the horrors that soldiers inflicted upon their fellow human beings. However, I think it is important to focus instead on the bravery, courage, and sacrifice exhibited by these American soldiers. Even in the face of absolute depravity, these young men enthusiastically served their country with heroism and grace.
mcwilcox_12's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
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4 stars for the historical content, but 3 stars for the writing, and I always round down when rating.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.
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.
Content Warnings
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.