The Needham Free Public Library is set to host author Allen Boyer, with his latest talk about WWII Air Commander General George Churchill Kenney, on Wednesday, August 22 at 7:30 p.m., in the Library’s Community Room.
Boston-bred George Kenney won the air war in New Guinea and the Philippines. Kenney grew up in Brookline and studied at MIT. In World War I, he was a fighter pilot in France, and stayed on in the Army Air Corps; in World War II, he was the air commander for General Douglas MacArthur. Kenney had to fight the Japanese on a shoestring, with planes that no one else wanted—but he stopped the Japanese, and then started the Allied drive back to the Philippines. Douglas MacArthur said that “George is my buccaneer.” MacArthur got the compliment right: Kenney liked sinking enemy ships and raiding enemy fortresses and telling stories of his airmen’s derring-do. When he wrote his memoirs, he marked himself as one of the most quotable of generals. Kenney’s arguments led to the creation of the independent U.S. Air Force. He was also a world-class public relations man born wrong—someone who could put a special spin on any story.
Allen Boyer is the author of “Rocky Boyer’s War: an Unvarnished History of the Air Blitz That Won the War in the South Pacific,” a WWII history based on a diary kept by his father, as well as a lawyer, writer, and historian. He has reviewed books for the New York Times and run investigations for the New York Stock Exchange.
This event is sponsored by the Needham Free Public Library. For further information, call the Library at (781-455-7559).
