Air Power: The Men, Machines, Ideas That Revolutionized War, from Kitty Hawk to the Gulf War

x, 518 pp. 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. Stephen Budiansky draws on combat memoirs, government archives, and museum collections to create a sobering and dramatic account of the air wars of the last hundred years. A story of ideas and men, of intricate machines and fierce passions, Air Power is an edge of the seat drama of contemporary warfare and technology crafted by one of our most gifted writers.