The Stars and Stripes article covering the Airlift's 60th anniversary celebrations in Wiesbaden is worth looking at for many reasons including the great photos of Hal Halvorsen back in ths skies over Germany dropping candy parachutes. But this passage, in particular, caught my eye.

Army Col. Mark Olinger, commander of the Defense Energy Support Center–Middle East, made a special trip from his Middle Eastern base — he couldn’t say where — toting along a copy of the book, "The Candy Bombers — The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour."

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," Olinger said, and admitted this is the first time he’s ever taken off from work — or traveled thousands of miles — for an event like this.

"Like the World War II and Korean veterans, the veterans of the Berlin Airlift are all — they’re passing on," he said. "They have left a legacy that’s the benchmark for humanitarian airlift."

On this 4th of July weekend, thank you Col. Olinger and all those are serving overseas for carrying on America's proud traditions.

A blogger in Western Canada who goes by PelaLusa did something pretty cool in honor of America's birthday: He took a radio interview I did with John Batchelor and turned it into a mini-documentary complete with music, images, and video. Definitely worth checking out! It is in two parts.

Part One:

Part Two:

I've been slow in posting the video of CSPAN's Book TV's coverage of a reading I did at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ. I was pretty jetlagged that night but it is a pretty good representation of what I've been saying on the book tour for those of you who haven't been able to make it one of the stops. This link should work.

Michael Barone, a senior writer at U.S. News and World Report, is best known as a pundit and as the principal author of The Almanac of American Politics -- the essential reference book of American politics. But he is also a historian and his 1990 book Our Country is up there with William Manchester's The Glory and the Dream as one of the best surveys of mid-20th century America.

This week he writes about the lessons he thinks we should learn from The Candy Bombers. Along the way, he writes that:

The Berlin Airlift’s “tale of American expertise, ingenuity, and generosity is told vividly by Andrei Cherny in his wonderfully readable book The Candy Bombers.”

It's been interesting to see people from all sides of the political spectrum try to draw inspiration from this book. I think that's the role of history: it doesn't provide clear answers but can hopefully shed some light on the present and future.

UPDATE: Looks like U.S. News and World Report is having some site issues. Barone's column can also be found here.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote a column all about The Candy Bombers and the Berlin Airlift. She writes:

The lessons of the Berlin Airlift are anything but simple, which is what makes it such a useful historical moment. Cherny's book is something of a Rorschach test on Iraq: The message readers receive may depend on the mindset with which they arrived.

Definitely worth reading!