Will I love Boyd?

As a bomber guy to the core, I approached this book with a silent groan—ugh, another Tom Cruise tale. Was I ever wrong! ‘Forty-Second Boyd’ (maximum time it took him to defeat all challengers) was not only a great fighter pilot, his combat tactic discoveries changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights today. Many consider him the father of the legendary F-15 and F-16 fighters.

Coram’s knowledge and writing style are superb. Boyd was a complicated man; absolutely brilliant with insight and slide rule, a poor father and worse husband—loud, abrasive, and profane. He rarely… show more.

In both war and business, size and technology are pieces of a winning strategy, but not the biggest factors. Otherwise, the Fortune 500 would never turn over! To figure out what’s missing, Boyd added insights from thermodynamics, quantum physics, physiology, and mathematics to Sun Tzu’s philosophy of winning without fighting, or, if that proves impossible, to win before fighting. The result was a revolution in the design of fighter aircraft and a doctrine of warfare that has been adopted by militaries from the US Marine Corps to the Royal Norwegian Navy.

Coram was a reporter and novelist before turning to… show more.