The acclaimed author of Brute recounts the life of the veteran U.S. Air Force pilot and innovative military strategist in this biography.

John Boyd was arguably the greatest fighter pilot in American history. From the proving ground of the Korean War, he went on to win renown as the instructor who defeated-in less than forty seconds-every pilot who challenged him. But what made Boyd a man for the ages was what happened after he left the cockpit. A fighter on the ground as well as in the air, Boyd was relentless, brilliant, stubborn, and virtually always right. He managed to transform almost single-handedly the way military aircraft, particularly the F-15 and F-16, were designed. He then dedicated many lonely years to a radical theory of conflict that at the time was mostly ignored but now informs military activity around the globe and is acclaimed as the most influential thinking about conflict since Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Praise for Boyd

"Boyd could not be more welcome. . . . It should be required reading for every American citizen." -Washington Post Book World

"This engrossing biography should definitely be on the bedside table of all our current military leadership." -Andrew Cockburn, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A stunning biography . . . Coram traces how Boyd's ideas percolated into key centers of civilian and military decision making and led to a swift and decisive victory in Operation Desert Storm, and how his maneuverist doctrine foretold the type of terrorist tactics used on September 11." -Martin Edwin Andersen, Insight