Publishers Weekly
★ 03/11/2024
In this soaring account, bestseller Alexander (The Endurance) spotlights a group of American airmen stationed in Burma who flew the “Hump” over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to Chinese allies during WWII. Franklin Roosevelt was committed to supporting Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army against the Japanese, Alexander writes, though the fickle Chiang proved a difficult ally, with increasingly exorbitant demands and few battlefield accomplishments. (One American general later claimed that when a fed-up Roosevelt asked if Chiang could be replaced, the president’s advisers speculated whether the Chinese leader could be “lost” flying over the Hump.) Meanwhile, flying over the world’s highest mountain range tested the skills of young pilots and navigators of the Air Transport Command, who were rushed through training. Accidents were near daily occurrences, and escape meant bailing out into one of two deadly landscapes: the snowcapped Himalayas or the Burmese jungle. Despite the job’s extreme peril, it was viewed as unglamorous; “on the lowest rung of the military aviation hierarchy,” aircrew in Burma, who received little recognition and lived in Spartan conditions, referred to themselves as the FBI—“Forgotten Bastards of India.” (However, as Alexander reveals, the lessons learned flying the Hump proved invaluable in 1948 when the ATC was conscripted to work the Berlin Airlift.) A thrilling aviation adventure that also casts an assured historical lens on a lesser-known arena of WWII diplomacy, this is sure to enrapture readers. (May)
From the Publisher
Riveting.” —The New York Times
“A clear and engaging narrative. . . . A thorough, but never dull, history for the reader curious about the reality of World War II.” —The New York Journal of Books
“Alexander’s vivid retelling of this aerial feat is matched only by her exquisite rendering of the pilots’ fear.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
“Well-detailed and engagingly told.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A seamless and illuminating piece of modern war history.” —Shelf Awareness
"A thrilling aviation adventure that also casts an assured historical lens on a lesser-known arena of WWII diplomacy, this is sure to enrapture readers." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Readers interested in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and Asian history will enjoy Alexander’s detailed and beautifully written account." —Library Journal (starred review)
Library Journal
★ 03/01/2024
The Japanese occupation of eastern China in 1942 cut off foreign support to Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese nationalist forces. In order to keep China in World War II, U.S. and British planners promised to ferry supplies, weapons, and ammunition to Chinese forces. The British would complete the Ledo Road, a supply route along the border of China and Burma. Americans chose an air route over the Himalayan foothills, a route that came to be known as "the Hump." Journalist Alexander (The Bounty) details the heroic efforts by American and British soldiers and flyers, Indigenous Burmese people, and Chinese people to ferry supplies through inhospitable terrain, monsoons, and dense jungles while fighting Japanese incursions. Alexander weaves together a wide array of primary sources to describe the conditions faced by pilots—freezing temperatures, ice buildup, buffeting winds, and peaks higher than the plane's flight path—to show the challenges troops needed to overcome. However, strategic advances in the eastern Pacific made both routes redundant by 1945, and in the postwar world, Truman did not view securing China as a priority. VERDICT Readers interested in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and Asian history will enjoy Alexander's detailed and beautifully written account.—Chad E. Statler
Kirkus Reviews
2024-01-12
The deadly skies over the Himalayas form the backdrop of this account of the Allied forces’ Burma campaign in World War II.
When Japanese troops overran the British colony of Burma in 1942, they cut off the land route between Allied bases in India and the troops of Chiang Kai-shek in China, seen as the West’s bulwark against Japanese aggression and insurgent Communist forces. Rearing between them were the Himalayas and their “towering weather systems” characterized by “violent, roiling, sheering masses of air” and “unbroken levels of ice” extending upward for thousands of feet. Nevertheless, supplying the Chinese Nationalist troops was seen as such a priority that U.S. pilots ferried fuel, matériel, and troops back and forth over “the Hump” from 1942 through the end of the war. The route was so dangerous that it became known as “the aluminum trail” for the wreckage that accumulated along it and tempted pilots to fly over known Japanese-held territory in order to skirt it. Alexander, author of The Endurance and The Bounty, packs the text with gripping anecdotes of nail-biting flights that often end with crashes into the Burmese jungle (another object of terror for the airmen). They make for thrilling reading, but they pile on top of one another such that the narrative begins to feel baggy, as if Alexander couldn’t decide which would best serve her narrative so simply included them all. In addition to the air-transport efforts, she covers the ground war but not the air-combat campaign. Choosing to use colonial nomenclature to align with the period, largely relying on Western accounts for narrative and background, she too often presents the cultures of Burma and China through the exoticizing lenses. Her frequent, gratuitous use of the slur coolie is a further blemish.
Compelling tales of aerial derring-do lift this uneven but entertaining account.
