Robert Coram – författare

A detailed portrait of American fighter pilot John Boyd examines his distinguished military career during the Korean War and his postwar efforts as a military theorist who took on the entrenched Pentagon bureaucracy to transform the art of modern warfare and the American military with his revolution

During the course of his military career, Bud Day won every available combat medal, escaped death on no less than seven occasions, and spent sixty-seven months as a POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where his roommate was John McCain. Despite incredible torture, Day would not break. He became a hero to POWs everywhere - a man who fought without pause, a prisoner at war. Despite receiving the Medal of Honour and becoming the most highly decorated American in uniform, Day found himself passed over for promotion to Brigadier General, and he retired. But with his children grown and a lifetime of service to his country behind him, he engaged in his mightiest - and most surprising - battle of all. One day in 1995, Day was told by his pharmacist that his pain medication would no longer be free. He was furious and shocked; after all, he and his generation of veterans were promised free lifetime medical care when they signed on with the military. Propelled by his conscience and sense of duty, he dusted off his law degree and sued the U.S. government on behalf of 1.5 million powerless veterans.

A larger-than-life fighter pilot and genius of aviation, engineering and military strategy, Boyd dared to challenge the intractable military bureaucracy and its outmoded practices. The single-minded determination developed in his youth carried him on to renown for his skill as a fighter pilot, for his passion as an instructor, his legendary appetite and lack of respect for his superiors. But this was just the start as he went on to transform the way military planes were designed, fighting the air force's entrenched ideas every step of the way. Boyd's breakthrough designs were crucial to the creation of the F-15 and 16, and he dedicated years to an innovative theory of conflict that eventually made him the most influential military theoretician since Sun Tzu. A magnet for bright young men dissatisfied with the impractically old-fashioned methods of the military, his circle of "acolytes" extended his influence through their headline-grabbing Reform Movement. By the time of Boyd's death his name had reached the furthest corners of the military establishment.Coram paints a colourful portrait of this extremely unconventional man who locked horns with the most conventional of bureaucracies - and won.