Brendan I. Koerner

Koerner is one my favorite American non-fiction writers (of my generation). This is his first book which concerns a black soldier, Herman Perry, sent to the backwater Burma theater of WWII. While there he gets into trouble, runs off into the jungle and is hunted. Koerner in an interview compares Perry to Kurtz from Heart of Darkness since he goes native beyond the pale. In fact the book has some of that aspect, but it's not as romantic as it sounds, this is really a book about Jim Crow show more America - in the Burmese jungle. Jim Crow America is Kurtz gone feral, Perry is civilization's naturally insane reaction. Seeing old racist patterns in an exotic location opens our eyes to injustice. It's no accident that when blacks returned after the war they were more willing to stick up for their rights (see Devil the Grove for the explosive results). Koerner has his finger on the pulse of America - race issues, a big wild territory tamed with brute engineering, a love interest, and how the little guy takes on the man and, for a while anyway, wins. All in a package of solid historical research told with cinematic effect. Spike Lee might film it, we can hope.

This book has been added to my WWII recluse literature collection. During WWII there were a number of individuals who for various reasons, intentionally or by necessity, turned their backs on Civilization and went alone into the Wilderness. While the rest of the world destroyed itself in conflict, they found solitude in nature and reflected on what it means to be truly "civilized". They lived off the land with native peoples, or alone, and on the run. show less

Reading this book reminded me why I love wartime history so much...war really does bring out the best and the worst in humanity. There are equally countless tales of heroism and of dastardly deeds.

But this story ends up being both. Koerner's portrait of Herman Perry, the "Jungle King," is unflinching but sympathetic. As such, it is a gripping expression of the tragic weakness that is humanity.

P.S. I read this book as a follow-up to Laura Hillenbrand's amazing work "Unbroken." You couldn't show more ask for a better contrast of individual war experiences. I highly recommend reading them back-to-back. show less

The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking by Brendan I. Koerner is a detailed history of a pair of hijackers as well as a history of hijacking in general. Koerner is a former columnist for The New York Times and Slate. His work has been printed in the New York Times Magazine, Harpers and many other publications. He is currently a contributing editor at Wire. This is his second book.

I am just barely old enough to remember all the “Take this bus to Cuba” and show more other hijacking jokes of the 1970s. I do recall television comedies also picked up on the theme too. How ever funny it seemed at the time, it was a serious matter. Koerner lays out many facts that I have forgotten. Surprising to me was the number of veterans who hijacked planes for multiple reasons from demanding money to give to North Vietnamese orphanages to the purely delusional. Cuba was a popular destination to either give the hijacked plane as a gift to Castro, to study communism, or as one veteran insisted to kill Castro with his bare hands. The number of juveniles that hijacked planes is also surprising high. Although many methods of taking over the plane were clever, many hijackers had put very little thought into the their plan aside from taking it over. More than once, commuter planes were hijacked with orders to fly to Cuba or other international destinations.

Another rather surprising bit of information is how opposed the airlines were to additional security. Airlines refused to increase security. They did not want to treat their passengers like criminals and more importantly they did the math and found it was cheaper to meet hijackers demands than buy into security. For a long time, hijackers never hurt passengers and the worst case was “being late for dinner.” Hijacking was an common inconvenience. Airlines learned the best thing to do was meet the demands and carry on. There are several instances where the airlines and pilots completely shut the FBI out for fear that confrontation would bring violence. I remember hearing how sky marshals brought safety to the skies. Koerner, however, shows the number of sky marshals compared to the number of flights made it very improbable that a sky marshal would actually be on a hijacked plane. To complicate the sky marshals job, airlines regularly bumped them off flights to open a seat for a paying customer. Eventually, everyone, including Castro, got fed up with hijackings.

The Skies Belong to Us documents several different hijackings and the results from mandatory sentencing to public opinion. One hijacking is covered throughout the book. Alternating chapters of history and the hijacking of Western Airlines flight 701 from Los Angeles to Algiers – the longest hijacking in American history. Koerner gives the complete biography of the two involved in hijacking flight 701: William Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow. Their story takes up the majority of the book. This inside look into their lives before, during, and after the hijacking ties the entire book together. It give personal insight into a successful hijacking. Their story is very compelling and very well worth reading.

The general history of highjacking is a look back into an age that those under fifty will find hard to believe existed. The idea of post 9/11 TSA security would be a thing of dark science fiction fifty years ago. It was truly a different era. A younger reader today will not understand how these things were allowed to happen. Why didn't the government force airlines and passengers to agree to higher security? Perhaps there are some who are older wondering how we allowed the government the power it has today. That maybe the back story in this book. How we as a society changed our view on rights and security: what was unacceptable then and fully expected now. This is more than just an excellent history book. It is part of our culture, then and now. show less

I thought this book was the perfect combination of suspenseful and informative. It provided me with a clear understanding of the role of African Americans in World War II, Army policy relating to African American conscripts, the Allied actions in China, Burma, and India, and then of course Herman Perry, the soldier the book is about.

The book is an excellent and well-written thriller (despite being non-fiction), but more than anything, it is an eye-opening look at the treatment of blacks in show more the American Army at the time. A lot of the well-known literature on this subject relates to the Harlem Hellfighters (infantry) or the Tuskegee Airmen (pilots), but "Now the Hell Will Start" discusses the Jim Crow mentality of the Army and the fact that the overwhelming majority of black men in the military were relegated to manual labor, since they were deemed unfit for combat due to the racist science of the time that suggested blacks were mentally incapable of handling anything else.

The book is also an excellent introduction to the Burmese jungle, which I previously knew nothing about. The author explains the role of Burma, China, and India in World War II, and Herman Perry was deployed to Burma to work on building a road that ultimately ended up being mostly pointless. I found the detail about the perils of the Burmese jungles and the monsoon season to be both fascinating and horrifying.

Some people have claimed that this book paints Herman Perry in a sympathetic light despite the fact that he killed an officer. While I agree that he was painted in a sympathetic light, I do think it is warranted. The disparities between the treatment of white soldiers and black soldiers were glaring, particularly with regard to soldiers who exhibited any degree of mental instability, as Herman Perry did. This combined with the fact that everyone (white or black) working in China, Burma, and India was essentially ignored by the Army brass made me wonder why more people did not end up in the same situation.

I definitely recommend this book, though the descriptions of life in the Burmese jungle are not for the faint of heart. show less