Sometimes one good man can change history. If you don't believe that read this book. One guy from Utah may have in the end defeated the Soviet Union.
It is normal to wonder if anything we do really matters. As men, most of us want to make a real impact, and yet most of us don't feel like we do. In 1948, Gail Halvorsen, an Air Force pilot from Utah was one of those guys. He had been in the military since 1942 and had flown thousands of hours on cargo routes. It was more dangerous than it sound, but he had no combat experience. In the USAF, in 1948 that put him at a gigantic professional disadvantage.
Then, when Stalin ordered the blockade of Berlin, surrounded on all sides by the Soviet Sector of Occupied Germany, it looked like the world was about to plunge back into World War III. Halvorsen was assigned on some of the first airlift flights to try to supply the city by air and then he did something that changed the world, and that can be argued actually was the critical event to the eventual destruction of the Soviet Union, he gave some kids candy.
The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour is one of the 20 best books I have ever read and it has a lot of messages about how you want to live your life - and how you don't won't to.
Highly recommend!
Posted Oct 3, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC