This book is a must have for all you people who study economics or are interested in matters alike. The degree of analysis that professor Tobin reached in this book makes it a fundamental part of the story of economic theory

VERY INTERESTING and well-researched book! Buy it for your favorite engineer or curious person.

I felt the book was well written, but, I have always wondered why some relevant information was left out. I only hope that Mr. Tobin and his editor will contact me. My Grandfather was Captain Myron T. Hess one of the officers Mr. pyle was with that day he was killed. My Grandfather and his 1st Sargeant were responsible for killing the Sniper which took Mr. Pyle's life. I have for years had the literature which substantiates this claim. As a proud Grandson, I have always wished that My Grandfather and his 1st Sargeant were given some text. But I have yet to find it in published books or film.

The author, James Tobin, recounts Ernie Pyle's life from his childhood in Indiana to his 1945 death in the Pacific Theatre. The text notes "Sadness verging on bitterness always colored Ernie Pyle's memories of his early years," and relates that his adult personal life also was basically unhappy. In 1928 while working for the Washington Daily News, Pyle began writing an aviation column that ultimately was carried by all Scripps-Howard newspapers. Foreshadowing his WWII reporting style, Pyle' favorite subjects were the anonymous airmail pilots telling "tales of the pilot's feats of bravery and improvisation."

From 1935 to 1942 he roamed the western hemisphere where he wrote a column on his wanderings for the News and developed into a consummate craftsman of short prose and as Tobin noted "...in the process created "Ernie Pyle." Reflecting what would be his wartime style the author notes, "...he studied unknown people doing extraordinary things." The text relates Pyle's activities as a war correspondence in Tunsia where he shared the dangers and discomforts of the infantrymen at the front, and developed a bond with the American infantryman where his "writing transcended propaganda; it was richer, more heartfelt." At home Pyle's editors were delighted with the rapid growth of his popular column. After Tunisia, he followed the troops in the invasion of Sicily and later into Italy.

In Italy, he completed construction of his mythical hero, the long-suffering G.I. The text notes that the "inescapable force of Pyle's war writings is to establish an unwritten covenant between the soldier at the front and the civilian back home." Tobin also notes "Soldiers could see an image of themselves that they liked in his heroic depiction of the war...The G.I. myth worked for them too." However, as Pyle was becoming the "Number-One Correspondent" he became troubled because he had been "credited with having written the truth...He had told as much of what he saw as people could read without vomiting. It was the part that would make them vomit that bothered him..."

Pyle covered the Normandy landing in June 1944. In contrast to today's instant TV battlefront coverage, Pyle admitted to readers "Indeed it will be some time before we have a really clear picture of what has happened or what is happening at the moment." Pyle followed the infantry into France. The book notes, "The hedgerow country of Normandy was a killing field such as Ernie had never seen, and as the weeks passed, the constant presence of 'too much death' whittled down his will to persist." Once again the G.I.'s affection for him had risen after they saw Pyle force himself to share their dangers, which sometime made him, scream in his sleep. Those with today's anti-French attitude would agree with Pyle when he wrote that in Paris he felt as "though I were living in a whorehouse-not physically but spiritually."

Ernie Pyle returned to the United States in mid-September 1944. After a much needed rest, in January 1945 Pyle left for the Pacific Theatre. Here Pyle was in a different environment. He couldn't relate to the hot food and warm beds aboard Navy ships, the comfortable living conditions of airmen stationed on Pacific islands and the generally pleasant environment on Pacific islands. He wrote, "It was such a contrast to what I'd known for so long in Europe that I felt almost ashamed.... They're...safe and living like kings and don't know it." Even when relaxing with an aunt's grandson, a B-29 pilot who tried to relate the real combat conditions in the Pacific, Ernie just didn't understand the Pacific Theatre.

With the Army's 77th Division, "He went ashore" on a small island north of Okinawa "on the 17th of April 1945, talked with infantrymen during the afternoon and spent the night near the beach in a Japanese ammunition-storage bunker." The next morning he hitched a ride when at ten o'clock the jeep he was riding in came under Japanese machine gun fire. After jumping into a ditch with the jeep's other riders, Pyle raised his head and was killed instantly. Far from home, Ernie Pyle died among his beloved infantrymen.

In closing James Tobin writes "Ernie and his G.I.'s made America look good. The Common Man Triumphant, the warrior-with-a-heart-of-gold-this was the self-image America carried into the post-war era."

While the technology of war reporting has changed greatly since WWII, the author is correct when he observes, "As a practitioner of the craft of journalism, Pyle was perhaps without peer. After him, no war correspondent could pretend to have gotten the real story without having moved extensively among the front-line soldiers who actually fought."

The book ends with a nice touch, an Appendix that contains a potpourri of Pyle's articles.

I first became aware of Ernie Pyle as a young lad when I ran across a dusty old paperback in my grandparents attic. I voraciously devoured each page only to be saddened when I realized he never made it home from the war.

Here is a wonderful tribute to Ernie and his easy going manner mirrored with his elequent style of writing. From the absense of life, back through his lifes struggles, this work is a journey into Ernie's life. It will bring back floods of memories from older readers and give new readers insight into a great journalist who was taken from us in the prime of his career.

Ernie's manner of writing was a joy to read and Tobin has done a superb job in relaying his stories in regards to the common man, and the private soldier.

While I am a keen reader, I am no literary expert. Ordinarily I would not write a book review of any sort. However, I felt compelled to make an exception in the case of "To Conquer the Air". Despite my enthusiasm for the subject matter, I found Tobin's style insufferably painful. He is more interested in oblique trivia than in telling the story. For instance, he uses a single paragraph spanning almost half a page to itemize the contents of McClure's magazine simply to introduce an irrelevant character by the name of Professor Newcomb (p.117). He regularly snatches boredom from the jaws of curiosity with vignettes about the petty struggles between Bishop Wright (Wilbur and Orville's father) and breakaway factions within his church. How any author (or editor for that matter) can mix ingredients like rivalry, deceit, visionary brilliance, and momentous discovery into such a lethally disagreeable cocktail is entirely beyond me.

This is a well written account of the development of aviation. It makes it clear that there were a number of people who might legitimately have claimed a stake in the Wrights' "invention", and the book details how much of their time was dedicated to protecting their patents toward the end of their lives. I suppose the cutthroat nature of it all was a bit disappointing to me; a couple of Ohio brothers adapting their bicycle mechanic skills just for the thrill of invention is not the story here. In any case, the practicality of flight was proven just as the Great War opened, eclipsing some of their accomplishments much as the newly opened Panama Canal passed from public fascination to military tool at almost the same moment. The book is certainly worth reading.

Imagine a race to achieve a great scientific breakthrough. Imagine this race pits a well-established, well-financed man of reputation against a couple of brothers, unknowns and without formal training or higher education of any kind. Imagine that the brothers, against all odds, emerge triumphant.

But your imagination isn't necessary, because this thrilling, dramatic story is true, and it's expertly told by James Tobin in "To Conquer The Air." This is the story of the Wright brothers, bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio, who became fascinated by the potential for man to fly. It's also the tale of Samuel Langely, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who was pursuing his own, ill-fated dreams of flight at the same time. Despite generous backing by the government and private individuals (including his friend, Alexander Graham Bell), Langely wound up the loser in this great competition.

Tobin's narrative vividly brings the Wrights, Langely, Bell and the other key players in the first decade of flight back to life. The narrative moves with the briskness of a good adventure story. We share the exhiliaration of the triumphs these man achieve; we're also party to their sorrows at failure.

In addition to making these men fully-dimensional, Tobin also manages to recreate the great awe, skepticism and wonder that greeted the inaugural of the age of flight. I can remember my mother telling stories about how, as a girl growing up in a large city in the 1930s, people would still hurry out of their homes to catch a glimpse of an airplane passing overhead. That sense of wonder, long since forgotten, lives once more, and animates these pages.

A nice little book, easy to read and worth the price paid for it. I would have liked to see more detail, perhaps in the next book I buy. I gave it three stars as it is a light report of the Rosetta Stone. I read the whole book in about 1/2 hour. It does have other sources from which to select more detailed books.

"The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone" is accessible to our 9-year-old would-be Egyptologist with just a bit of vocabulary help from adults, yet is not the least insulting to her parents. This small book, with fewer than 100 pages, largeish type, and many clear illustrations, gives a readable and straightforward account of how the Rosetta stone allowed scholars to understand and even find the pronunciation of a language long after its last speaker was long dead. We learn, for example, that to the ancients, she was "Cleopadra" and not "Cleopatra".

There is enough detail to help understand the process, and to convince the reader that the reconstructions are sound. The stone and its translation is put into its historical context, both ancient and modern.

This is an admirable, brief, and inexpensive introduction to the subject, and is well-written. The professional will look elsewhere, and the complete greek, demotic, and heiroglyphic texts are available in the inexpensive Dover reprint of E.A. Wallis Budge's "The Rosetta Stone", which I review separately.

Instead of presenting a comparison between the two ideologies and how moral values coincide with those belief systems, this book simply presents five essays, most of an academic tinge and of a conservative leaning. Somewhat interesting but doesn't do a good job of dealing with the subject matter. A discussion of religion would have been nice in a book about morality. I guess we have to leave that debate up to Jim Wallis and Billy Graham?