Among other things, Andrei Cherney is: a former speechwriter for Al Gore; the youngest white house speechwriter in US history (Wiki wants a citation -- I guess his personal bio isn't enough); founder and co-editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas; SEIU member; Reid strategist; and Stephanie Fleischman's husband (the wedding announcement was in the Times. I presume they're still married). I bet if I continue surfing, I'll find other articles with yet more 'look why he's important enough to write about' modifiers. Oh, and he blogs, sorta. And he was on a panel at yKos 2. So there's the dKos hook.
Plus he gets to shill discuss his book, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour, with Stephen tonight. Here's the start of one review:
America's memories of the Berlin Airlift have been reduced to something like this: The Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin. The United States flew in a bunch of food and won the world's admiration. The Soviets gave up.
It sounds so simple.
What makes "The Candy Bombers" a successful work of popular history, then, is that it shows how reality was much more complicated - the airlift started almost by accident, it succeeded despite opposition at the highest levels, and its success may have saved the presidency of Harry Truman.
Author Andrei Cherny, a former Al Gore speechwriter and a Navy Reserve officer, comes close to breathless overkill and is clunky at times in painting a battle of good Americans versus evil Communists. But when he lets the facts speak for themselves, he offers an enjoyable, timely narrative.
Hey! He's a Navy Reserve officer, too! Missed that one. Anyway, Publisher's Weekly (via Amazon or B&N) ends with
This book could have been cut by a third for better effect; Cherny's prose and his references to 9/11 are manipulative, and his subject, particularly the nuts and bolts of the airlift, will appeal primarily to WWII buffs, who should still find much to savor in this exhaustive, often absorbing and lucid account of America's successful standoff against the Soviets.
Kirkus says (via B&N)
Writing with the flair of a novelist, Cherny ... tells the story of the Berlin Airlift...Cherny dramatically weaves together the conjoined fates of numerous characters...and pilots Curtis LeMay, Bill Tunner and Gail Halvorsen, the last-named celebrated for dropping little parachutes of candy for Berlin children. The author skillfully delineates the airlift's role in dramatically improving Germans' and Americans' attitudes toward each other, with significant consequences for the Cold War. His account amplifies and vivifies material presented in a more bare-bones fashion by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell in Berlin Airlift: The Salvation of a City (2008). Lively, densely detailed and unabashedly enthusiastic.
I only found one interview before I stopped looking, but his own sites (refreshingly and inventively, AndreiCherny.com or TheCandyBombers.com) will likely have more. |