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Stephen Budiansky

Air Power: The Men, Machines, and Ideas That Revolutionized War, from Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II Hardcover – Bargain Price, April 12, 2004

by Stephen Budiansky (Author)

11 customer reviews

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Product details

Hardcover: 528 pages
Publisher: Viking; First Edition edition (April 12, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0670032859
ASIN: B0009S5AV2
Package Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.7 x 1.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
Average Customer Review: 11 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,503,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #178661 in Deals in Books
- #18080 in Military Aviation History (Books)

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Robert Gregory

A thorough examination of air power developments and ideas over the past century

May 31, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This long work covers the history of air power in great, yet interesting detail. Budiansky fully captures the personalities of those who influenced thinking on air power while also covering technical developments. His coverage of the people and the ideas is more interesting than the machines, though all three are covered in great detail.

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Mobius

A techno-historical page turner

January 4, 2005

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book has just the right mix of fascinating anecdote, illuminating technical detail, and historical exposition to make it both an entertaining read and deeply informative. As a pilot with a background in physics I especially liked the fact that Budiansky's technical explanations were generally clear concise and accurate. Probably the most important thing to take out of this book is how a military doctrine can become so ingrained that it survives for decades despite voluminous empircal evidence to the contrary.

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G.C.

Five Stars

March 4, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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Thomas L Temple

Enjoyable

January 2, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This item was given as a gift for an individual and they loved the book. They started reading it immediately.

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Declan Trott

War and Peace

January 8, 2009

Format: Hardcover

Before the Wright Brothers ever flew, authors like HG Wells were predicting that vast destruction would be wrought from the air in any future conflict. This is the story of how aviation technology slowly, fitfully came to deliver on that promise.

From the first short hops at Kitty Hawk, Budiansky takes the reader from the anticlimactic debut of heavier than air craft in the Italo-Turkish war to the awesome power of the USAF during the two Gulf Wars. Without neglecting the obvious great battles and aircraft, he emphasises crucial peacetime developments, in both aircraft design and the equally important realm of tactics and strategy, that did so much to shape how wars were fought.

The book has some minor flaws. British and American development of such technologies as the jet engine, radar, and swept wings are given exhaustive treatment, at the end of which we are informed that, by the way, the Germans had also made these inventions years before. It is also unfortunate to end any piece of writing with the statement "Rumsfeld was right". While the second Gulf war was a technological and military triumph, we are given no hint of the morass Iraq was to become or how ineffective all weather medium level precision bombing is against an urban insurgency.

But these jarring notes are insufficient to spoil a masterpiece. Budiansky leaves us with the irony that air power has achieved its greatest success in the battlefield role that ambitious officers have been trying to escape since the beginning.

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William Holmes

The Use and Abuse of Air Power

April 12, 2004

Format: Hardcover

I'm always a little wary of long history books written by journalists, who sometimes present history as a tedious interview of various "sources." Stephen Budiansky, a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, is a happy exception to the rule. His prose is clear and crisp, and he tells an engaging story in a way that kept drawing me back to his rather hefty "Air Power."
Budiansky begins his book by explaining why the accomplishments of the Wright Brothers were so remarkable. He then renders a detailed history of the military uses, both real and imagined, of aircraft. The result is a story of a rapidly emerging technology told against the background of the military theories of the 20th and early 21st century.
Throughout his book, Budiansky takes issue with the views of theorists and generals who claimed that air power could be a "war-winning" weapon, either because it could be used to terrorize civilian populations into surrender or because it could cause rapid economic collapse by striking at the chokepoints in an enemy's supply system. The author argues that, with very few exceptions (such as the interdiction of German oil supplies in the last year of World War II), air power has not performed very well as a strategic tool and has always been far more effective when used as a tactical weapon in support of forces on the ground. In this sense, the Second Gulf War in Iraq can be viewed as the apotheosis of the effective use of air power: with the advent of readily available precision weapons, even "strategic" aircraft such as the B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers have been used to great advantage in the role of close support of ground troops.
In the aftermath of the opening phases of the Second Gulf War, air power is for the moment ascendant on the battle field. But if there is anything to be learned from Budiansky's meticulous history, it is that military innovation is a very Darwinian business. Plenty of bright people are studying the successful American and British invasion of Iraq, trying to make sure that the air power strategy used in that conflict will work just as well in the next war--or, for those worried about being on the receiving end, trying to prevent that strategy from working at all.

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Air Power: The Men, Machines, and Ideas That Revolutionized War, from Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II Hardcover – Bargain Price, April 12, 2004

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