The classic New York Times bestselling story of heroism and sacrifice--by the author of Flags of Our Fathers, The Imperial Cruise, and The China Mirage. This acclaimed bestseller brilliantly illuminates a hidden piece of World War II history as it tells the harrowing true story of nine American airmen shot down in the Pacific. One of them, George H. W. Bush, was miraculously rescued. What happened to the other eight remained a secret for almost 60 years. After the war, the American and Japanese governments conspired to cover up the shocking truth, and not even the families of the airmen were informed of what happened to their sons. Their fate remained a mystery--until now. FLYBOYS is a tale of courage and daring, of war and death, of men and hope. It will make you proud and it will break your heart.

Robbie's father is a spitfire pilot who was shot down during World War II and is now a POW. At only seventeen, Robbie lies about his identity to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force under the guise of going to a boarding school so that his mother doesn't find out. He starts training in Brandon, Manitoba, but after acing all his classes, he's dealt a disappointing blow when he's assigned to be a navigator on a Lancaster. He wanted to be a pilot, just like his father, but the commanders of the air force have other ideas. Robbie is soon on his way to England, where he completes his training on missions bombing German targets in enemy territory. It is during one of these missions that his Lancaster is fired upon and the pilot and many of the crew are shot. It's up to Robbie and his limited piloting experience to save the crew...and himself.

Tommy Riley and his friends are growing up among the men and machines of a key Air Force Base in the middle of the Cold War. One day, the boys sneak into a top-secret reconnaissance bomber, switch on the radio, and overhear a commie plan that is so diabolical . . .

Since launching his career at the Village Voice in the early 1980s Greg Tate has been one of the premiere critical voices on contemporary Black music, art, literature, film, and politics. Flyboy 2 provides a panoramic view of the past thirty years of Tate's influential work. Whether interviewing Miles Davis or Ice Cube, reviewing an Azealia Banks mixtape or Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, discussing visual artist Kara Walker or writer Clarence Major, or analyzing the ties between Afro-futurism, Black feminism, and social movements, Tate's resounding critical insights illustrate how race, gender, and class become manifest in American popular culture. Above all, Tate demonstrates through his signature mix of vernacular poetics and cultural theory and criticism why visionary Black artists, intellectuals, aesthetics, philosophies, and politics matter to twenty-first-century America.

What if we could travel back in time to save our heroes from painful deaths? What if we could rewrite history to protect and reward the innocent victims of injustice? In Alfredo Véa’s daring new novel, one man does just that, taking readers on a series of remarkable journeys. Abandoned as a child, brooding and haunted as an adult, Simon Vegas, “the Mexican Flyboy,” toils for years to repair a time machine that fell into his hands in Vietnam. With the help of his friend, eccentric Hephaestus Segundo, Simon uses the device to fly through time. Wherever acts of human cruelty take place, in the past or in the present, the machine lets him lift the suffering away and deliver them to a utopian afterlife. Blending magical realism, science fiction, history, and comic-book fantasy, The Mexican Flyboy swoops readers from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the vineyards of Northern California, from Ethel Rosenberg’s execution to Joan of Arc’s pyre, in a tale of justice, trauma, regret, and redemption. The dead pass through the narrative in a parade at once heartbreaking and hopeful, among them Vincent van Gogh and Malcolm X, Ernest Hemingway and Amadou Diallo. But the living—Simon’s pregnant wife, Elena, his old friend Ezekiel Stein, prisoner Lenny Hudson—all throw doubt onto Simon’s story. Is Simon truly a “magus,” transporting martyrs to a shared community in paradise? Or is he just a man broken by loss, guilt, and the trauma of war, hopelessly lost in an illusion of his own making? Crossing genres and blending comedy with tragedy, Alfredo Véa imagines a world where we can rewrite our pasts and heal the wounds inflicted by history. Inviting comparisons to the work of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, Junot Díaz and Michael Chabon, this powerful book is like nothing else you have ever read.

From one of the most original, creative, and provocative culture critics comes an eye-opening collection of essays and tales about American music and culture. Under the guise of writing about a single subject, Greg Tate’s essays in Flyboy in the Buttermilk branch out from his usual and explore social, political, and economic subjects. Taking on a wide diversity of subjects from irony of the GOP recruiting Blacks to the crisis of the Black intellectual and the music Miles Davis, James Brown, and many others, Tate writes in a brave and distinctive voice that is angry, joyous, anxious, and funny. In every piece of this collection, Tate offers informed insight into where America is going and why.

Offers an account of the U.S. airmen's roles in the air battles that took place over the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

Tommy Riley and his friends are growing up among the men and machines of a key Air Force Base in the middle of the Cold War. One day, the boys sneak into a top-secret reconnaissance bomber, switch on the radio, and overhear a commie plan that is so diabolical . . .

No TV reporter today is more respected than NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. She’s covered stories from Jonestown to the fall of the Berlin Wall, gotten unexpected answers from such interviewees as Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton, and balanced her high-wire career with a very public marriage to former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Dr. Alan Greenspan. Mitchell’s candid, funny, and riveting memoir is filled with unprecedented behind-the-scenes views of the television news industry and official Washington. A classic of contemporary journalism by a woman who has taken on her profession’s entire old-boy network, Talking Back deserves a place on the shelf alongside the memoirs of Hillary Clinton and Katherine Graham.

From his childhood growing up in Depression-era rural Manitoba to his rise through the ranks to become a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Col Gordon Brennand’s memoir, Farm Boy to Flyboy, is as much a history of the RCAF in the twentieth century as it is an account of his own life. Born a bit too late to participate in WWII, Gordon was inspired by Canada’s involvement in the Korean War to pursue a life in the military. After a failed start in the Navy, he enlisted with the Air Force with faint hopes of perhaps becoming a fighter pilot. Not only did he succeed, he logged four thousand hours on various jet aircraft types including over 1100 hours on the F-86 Sabre, which was the state-of-the-art fighter jet throughout most his thirty-four-year career, not to mention hundreds of hours on various other types of aircraft. He experienced several close calls during that time, including one incident when he had to eject and another when he had to force land due to engine failure. He went on to command two bases and has spent time living in most Canadian provinces as well as Germany, where he served for three years during the Cold War. Fascinating and insightful, this book will appeal to those who are fascinated by the military and flying as well as those who are simply seeking a first-person account of what life was really like for the men and women who served in the RCAF throughout one of the most pivotal periods of twentieth-century history.