Dive into this "truly compelling" (Good Morning America) New York
Times bestseller that explores how technology and best intentions
collide in the heat of war--from the creator and host of the podcast
Revisionist History.
In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a
Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central
Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to
examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the
airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists,
the "Bomber Mafia," asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the
enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was
the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and
scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but
may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The
Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, "Was it worth it?"
Things might have gone differently had LeMay's predecessor, General
Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision
bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership
handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to
the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale
of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
