Rating

★★★☆☆

Category

non-fiction

Read

2018-04-06

Pages

320

My take: Boyd was a brilliant asshole who should have been fired from any functioning organisation and been divorced by his wife/family (or properly coached - if possible). But then Air Force is the model of a dysfunctional organisation and so maybe it’s better he was there? I get so mad when billions of dollars are misappropriate by pigheaded careerists. So did Boyd.

Some structural issues: * Over-reliance on Evaluation Reports (ERs) for narrative. They were so unreliable (depended on the mood of the air force at the time, rather than anything Boyd did) that they didn’t really hold the story together. * Too much foreshadowing (“this wasn’t even the biggest thing he would do” etc etc) that was distracting. * It didn’t really me a feel for air-to-air combat nor the types of things his EM theory unlocked, beyond “you need to be able to slow down and speed up again”. I feel like that should have been the number #1 job of this book.

Overall glad I read the book but was kind of long for the payoff. And now I’m mad at the armed forces all over again.