About this item
Within a decade of the Wright Brothers historic flight at Kitty Hawk, pilots were dropping the first crude bombs out of airplanes in combat while visionaries were predicting that the crushing power of an aerial assault would end warfare as we knew it. Yet for much of the first century of flight the myth of the airplanes unstoppable power often surged far ahead of technological reality. It would take both brilliant new inventions and bold new thinking for air power to triumph at lastas it did with such devastating effect in the two Gulf wars. This sweeping history includes the latest inside details of air operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where precision weapons and unmanned drones quickly determined the outcome of the fight against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
About the Author
Stephen Budiansky is a historian, biographer, and journalist, the author of 18 books exploring intellectual and creative lives, military and intelligence history, and science and the natural world. He is the former Washington Editor of the scientific journal Nature and a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal. He lives on a small farm in northern Virginia.
