On the sixtieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, Andrei Cherny tells a remarkable story with profound implications for the world today. In the tradition of the best narrative storytellers, he brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States, and set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and to America's victory in the Cold War.

On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies', and most of America's top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them.

Harry Truman, an accidental president, derided by his own party; Lucius Clay, a frustrated general, denied a combat command and relegated to the home front; Bill Tunner, a logistics expert downsized to a desk job in a corner of the Pentagon; James Forrestal, a secretary of defense beginning to mentally unravel; Hal Halvorsen, a lovesick pilot who had served far from the conflict, flying transport missions in the backwater of a global wartogether these unlikely men improvised and stumbled their way into a uniquely American combination of military and moral force unprecedented in its time.

This is the forgotten foundation tale of America in the modern world, the story of when Americans learned, for the first time, how to act at the summit of world powera masterful and exciting work of historical narrative, and one with strong resonance for our time.

-Walter Isaacson, Author of Benjamin Franklin: Am American Life and Einstein: His Life and Universe

"Andrei Cherny's The Candy Bombers is a gripping, suspenseful narrative history about the U.S. Cold War era pilots determined to help the freedom-strangled citizens of West Berlin survive Soviet tyranny. Written with incredible verve and vivid detail, Cherny succeeds in making those harrowing days of Berlin circa 1948-49 come alive. As a historian, he reminds me of Stephen Ambrose at his best."

-Douglas Brinkley Professor of History; Fellow, Baker Institute, Rice University; Author, The Great Deluge and Tour of DutyEditor, The Reagan Diaries

"The early Cold War era was as tense as the days after 9/11. Andrei Cherny captures, in vivid detail, the excitement and drama of the U.S. response to the Soviet blockade of Berlin. You will have a hard time not cheering &or feeling moved &when America rescues its former enemy in the name of freedom." -Evan Thomas, Author, Sea of Thunder