The Voice of America is carrying a story about The Candy Bombers -- recounting the Airlift and the candy drops. They are featuring a story on their website and at the top of the page you can click on a link to a radio feature that is playing around the world.

All this week the TPM Café website is running a “Book Club” where I’m discussing the book with Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, Michael Tomasky of The Guardian, James Traub of The New York Times Magazine, Lawrence Kaplan of World Affairs, and Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report. You click here to scroll down to read all the posts or read them one at a time:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/02/the_lessons_of_the_past/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/02/the_right_kind_of_confidence/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/03/good_history/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/03/without_history_we_have_no_gui/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/03/_i _want_to_address/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/04/ve ry_sorry_andrei_for_the/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/04/i_ was_very_struck_by/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/05/my _fellow_admirers_of_the/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/05/wh o_are_the_true_heirs_of_1948/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/06/fi nding_hope_in_todays_candy_b/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/06/on e_more_point_on_the_lessons/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/06/sp eaking_to_the_world/

I usually try to answer each reader note I receive individually on this blog but all my recent book travel has left me way behind. Rather than responding one-by-one, I hope the writers of the below notes will collectively accept my thanks for the incredibly generous and warm letters. They really do mean the world to me.

Mr. Cherny,

-- Ed, New York, NY

In honor of this week's 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the New York Times asked me to do something very cool and exciting. They put together a special page about the Berlin Airlift for which I provided the content. On this page, you will find a brief overview of the Airlift and blockade I wrote for them, a list of "Five Recommended Books" for those who want to learn more about this era, some links to great old newsreels, 15 articles from the Times Archives of 1948-49 that I selected as among the most interesting and noteworty, and a link to a Q&A the New York Times conducted with me about the Berlin Airlift and the candy bombers.

It's all the Candy Bombers news that's fit to post!

"The Local" which is Germany's English-language news source ran an interview with me about the book on the occasion of the Airlift's 60th anniversary.

The interview was conducted by Steve Kettmann, the American author and journalist, who lives in Berlin. Kettmann is also the co-author of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd's new book, Letter to a New President: Commonsense Lessons for Our Next Leader. This is a moving and insightful book that should be read by all of us -- even if we won't be the next President! I highly recommend it -- and not just because Byrd and Kettmann write extensively about The Candy Bombers.

Along with their previous report on The Candy Bombers, the Voice of America has done another story about the book and the tale it tells. On both stories you can read the transcript or click at the top to hear the story as it played on radios around the world. This is the kind of message we as Americans should be bringing to the world -- a reminder about what America at its best can mean to people everywhere.

Andrei --
I just finished reading your excellent account of the little known history of the Berlin Airlift. I was in the military stationed near Frankfurt at that time. I was a studio/recording engineer with the American Forces Network (AFN). It was my experience that the pilots on the airlift used to listen to our station while enroute to Berlin. We received much mail from them and know they enjoyed the country/western music as well as all of our news programs to keep informed. I was disappointed that you omitted this fact from your work.
-- Frank
Dear Frank,
With so many facets to the Berlin Airlift story, I couldn't get to everything and had to leave a lot out and some on the cutting room floor. As I say in the introduction, I don't pretend this is a comprehensive work covering everything. Some things just didn't fit into the story I was telling. On this one, however, I have to point you to something you may have passed over. On page 426, I write about how the pilots would listen to Armed Forces Radio as they flew to Berlin, mentioning in particular the "Midnight in Berlin" broadcast. So you and the others who were part of that effort at least got a mention in this book if not the full coverage you definitely deserve.
Thanks for writing.
Best,
Andrei

While I was proud about the coverage that The Candy Bombers got in the New York Times, I am just as proud of the very nice review the book got in the Haysville, Kansas Sun Times. It is called a "marvelous history" and a "wonderful book." The review concludes:

For anyone curious about the grim aftermath of World War II, the genesis of the Cold War, or the more urgent contemporary challenge of introducing freedom and democracy to a population long-inured to dictatorship, The Candy Bombers is imperative reading. Diligently researched, excellently written and emotionally compelling, Andrei Cherny’s book is a revelation. If you read just one “serious” book this summer, The Candy Bombers would be an excellent choice.

Thank you Haysville!

I was excited to receive a note from Casey Due Hackney, one of America's hottest young classicists and the author of the 2006 book, The Captive Woman's Lament in Greek Tragedy. She points out that the question faced by Americans after World War II of how to deal with defeated Germans was not a new one:

I was just looking over your blog, and I wanted to tell you how much I admired your response to the letter of 5-9-08, in which you discuss how you grappled with the question of how much compassion or sympathy is appropriate for the defeated Germans. I have spent many years thinking about the way that ancient Greek literature (especially epic poetry and Athenian tragedy) portrays the captive Trojan women, the survivors and ultimate victims of the Trojan War. When the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power and at its most merciless, Athenian audiences regularly wept in sympathy for the plight of the defeated. I find it a remarkable recognition of the universality of war time suffering, one that blurs all distinctions between East and West, conqueror and conquered, even male and female (especially since young Athenian men doing their military training often played the role of the chorus of lamenting Trojan women!). The historical situations (the mythologized Trojan War, ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and WW2) are not parallel, but I still was very interested to read your thoughts on this morally essential question.

There's a lot to think about there. As I've alluded to before, I wrestled with this question myself -- especially in light of my own family history. But ultimately I decided that treating people as humans is the only way to bring them to treat others in the same way. Anyone else out there want to weigh in?

The very popular Jim Bohannon Show put up a bit over six minutes from the hour long interview I did on the show. They, for some reason, did not include the part where a caller phoned in to complain on air that I was not talking enough about the vital role that the Azores Islands played as a refueling stop for planes on their way to the Airlift. I assured him the Islands were mentioned in the book even if I hadn't highlighted them on the radio interview. I hope he isn't too mad...

Dear Mr. Cherny,

--Steve
Steve,

--Andrei

Along with writing The Candy Bombers, I am also the editor of the idea journal, Democracy. The former is a work of history, the latter deals with the challenges of today and tomorrow. But though the events described in the book happened sixty years ago, they have real lessons to teach us today. I wrote about some of these lessons in the TPM Cafe Book Club discussion and in my recent USA Today op-ed, but the blogger at BellerophonChimera pulls together the book, one of my articles in Democracy, and an interview I did for Germany.info into an interesting post.

I was honored to see that General Roger Brady, the commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (the man in Curtis LeMay's job for those who've read the book) quoted from The Candy Bombers in an op-ed in The Oklahoman last week.

Here are three very kind letters I recently received that I wanted to share with The Candy Bombers community.

Andrei,
Just a note to say how much I enjoyed your Candy Bombers book.
It was a very interesting read about a time in our history that I never knew much about.
I enjoyed how you worked a lot of the Truman and Dewey political aspect as well.
I have recommended your book to several people.
Also, although it might ruin your story, I could see the Candy Bombers being developed into a good movie.
-- Marty, Columbus, Ohio

Dear Mr. Cherny,
What a pleasure it was to read your book. I keep a list of the books I read, and every once in a while I mention that it is worth re-reading. Yours is one of those few. Though I know the outcome, the tension continues to build. Though I know most of the major characters, there are insights about them that are both fascinating and new. The inclusion of both the letters from children and lines from Porgy and Bess are priceless and quite moving. The letter from the kid who took Halvorsen to task for not finding his house was a hoot! Finally, the paragraph on p.204 (that old canard about the current, etc.) is so well-written. I loved it, and have recommended it to a friend in Denmark and a nephew in California.
-- Dick, Sheffield Village, OH

The folks at NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Hal Halvorsen and me about the book and the stories it tells. They really did a wonderful job of splicing everything together. It is definitely worth a listen. Click here and then click on "Listen Now" at the top of the page.