Subtitled "The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid – America's First World War II Victory"

Immediately after Japan's December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt sought to restore the honor of the United States with a dramatic act of vengeance: a retaliatory bombing raid on Tokyo itself. In those early days of World War II, America was ill prepared for any sort of warfare. But FDR was not to be dissuaded, and at his bidding a squadron of scarcely trained army fliers, led by the famous daredevil Jimmy Doolittle, set forth on what everyone regarded as a suicide mission.

The First Heroes is the story of this extraordinary mission, a moment in history that is surprisingly unfamiliar today. To give these heroes their due, Craig Nelson interviewed twenty of the surviving participants and researched more than forty thousand pages of archival documents.

Here is a true account of great personal courage and a powerful reminder that ordinary people, when faced with extraordinary circumstances, can rise to the challenge of history.