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Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany
"In the spring of 1944... we were masters in the air. The bitterness of the struggle had thrown a greater strain on the Luftwaffe than it was able to bear... For our air superiority, which by the end of 1944 was to become air supremacy, full tribute must be paid to the United States Eighth Air Force."
Winston Churchill, Closing the Ring
Current News:
– Masters of the Air named "Outstanding Book of the Year" by World War II Magazine.
– Masters of the Air has garned international attention. The book was recently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is a bestseller in the U.S. as well as the U.K., where it was published under the title Eighth Air Force: The American Bomber Crews in Britain.
– Masters of the Air now available in paperback
Advance Reviews:
Masters of the Air is a "searching, thoroughly engrossing history of the American air war against Nazi Germany", and Miller "vividly recreates the day-to-day life of the men who flew the missions and their comrades on the ground."
– William Grimes, New York Times
"Donald L. Miller's Masters of the Air is a stunning achievement. The compound effect of the book's narrative vitality and attention to human detail is terrific in all meanings of the word -- terrifying, extraordinary, highly admirable. What a story it is!"
– David McCullough, author of 1776 and John Adams
“For sixty years we have waited for a history to equal the epic saga of the Eighth Air Force’s struggle with fighters, flak and weather on a battlefield moving at three miles per minute five miles above the earth’s crust. Now it is here. With brilliant artistry, Don Miller paints the story from the pallet of the voices of the men who manned the planes or waited them out.”
– Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
"Over the first years of World War II, the only American casualties on European soil were flyboys shot out of the sky. Long before Normandy, America's bomber boys waged the Allies' longest WWII campaign and brought the war to Hitler. Now we are fortunate that the incomparable Donald Miller has brought the memory of these Masters of the Air back to us."
– James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys
"Masters of the Air sucks the wind out of the reader... It is a piece of history that accurately and comprehensively tells the story of the Eighth Air Force going mano a mano against a tough and determined foe. The incredible cost to both sides is recounted in riveting detail. It left me shaken."
– Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret.) and coauthor of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
"Miller's work is always extraordinary but this large volume is especially remarkable for its valuable recovery of details, like all the psychiatric ruin of the many bomber boys assigned to kill German civilians. This is a rare account of the American Eighth Air Force, and with so many readers hoodwinked by fantasies of the Good War, it deserves wide acceptance and ultimate enshrinement as a classic."
– Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory
"Masters of the Air is a direct hit."
– Allan R. Millett, Director, Eisenhower Center for American Studies, University of New Orleans
"Masters of the Air is a fresh
new account of the incredible rise of the American air force from young
men learning their trade on the job in combat to an irresistible force
that swept the vaunted Luftwaffe from the skies. Author Donald
L. Miller knits together the big events of the bombing campaign with
illuminating individual human stories of the heroes who lived and died
over Germany."
– Walter J. Boyne, former director, National
Air and Space Museum
"When
I learned that Don Miller had written a history of the air
war against Germany, I knew that readers would be transported
as virtual eye witnesses to this aerial battle field. His gripping reconstruction
of what was happening in the planes is matched by the best
account yet of what the bombings were doing to Germans on the
ground. This book bears the Miller trademark: a strong
narrative supported by solid history."
– Joseph
E. Persico, author of Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day 1918
"Masters of the Air is masterful narrative history, the elegantly interwoven story of the men and boys who first took the war to the heart of Germany. Vivid and meticulous, judicious but not
judgmental, Donald L. Miller chronicles the air war over Europe in all its heroism and horror."
– Geoffrey C. Ward, author of Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
"An eloquent tribute to America's bomber boys..."
– Publishers Weekly
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