A review by tanyarobinson
Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James Bradley

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.