A. J. Baime – författare

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year 2022

An “electrifying” biography of Walter White, a little-remembered Black civil rights leader who passed for white in order to investigate racist murders, help put the NAACP on the map, and change the racial identity of America forever (Chicago Review of Books).

Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the blazing height of racial violence. Born mixed race and with very fair skin and straight hair, White was able to “pass” for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the civil rights movement.

White’s risky career led him to lead a double life. He was simultaneously a second-class citizen subject to Jim Crow laws at home and a widely respected professional with full access to the white world at work. His life was fraught with internal and external conflict—much like the story of race in America. Starting out as an obscure activist, White ultimately became Black America’s most prominent leader, during his time. A character study of White’s life and career with all these complexities has never been rendered, until now.

By the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental President, Dewey Defeats Truman, and The Arsenal of Democracy, White Lies uncovers the life of a civil rights leader unlike any other.

Bestselling author of The Arsenal of Democracy and The Accidental President, A. J. Baime returns with the incredible story of the airplane that ended World War II, the B-29 Superfortress, the rise of American airpower, and the man who made it all possible.

Of all the feats of American ingenuity in World War II, perhaps none was as impressive in scale or vital to the Allied victory as the creation of American airpower. Just a few years before the start of World War II, the American military was stuck in the dark ages of aviation, with the U.S. Army's Air Corps mainly focused, not on combat, but on mail delivery. Fast forward to end of the war, and America had launched the most impressive flying machine the world had ever seen: the B-29 Superfortress, a weapon so essential to ending the war that its research and development process cost more than the Manhattan Project.

Now A. J. Baime, one of our foremost chroniclers of twentieth-century history, returns with the story of this remarkable turnaround, detailing the creation of the Superfortress and how U.S. General Hap Arnold made the rise of American airpower a reality. Through the lens of Arnold's remarkable careerstretching from the dawn of aviation until the creation of the U.S. Air ForceBaime tells a sweeping story of American ingenuity, perseverance, and resilience, as the brightest minds from around the country came together to create the planes and the air strategy that carried the Allies to victory. From the crowded assembly lines of American factories to antiaircraft fire in the skies over Western Europe to the machinations of Roosevelt's Oval Office, Baime masterfully recreates the decisions, weapons, and victories that demonstrated to the world that whoever controlled the skies would win the war and control the future. Yet it was the Superfortress that brought it all together, culminating with the delivery of atomic bombs which could not have been carried by any other plane in the U.S. arsenal.

What emerges is a book that rightfully places the creation of World War II airpower in the pantheon of American technological achievements alongside the Manhattan Project and the Space Race. In the end, the Superfortress did more than win the warit made America a superpower.