The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Gladwell, Malcolm. Published by Little Brown and Company, 2021. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½" tall., xiv, 240pp., illustrated. Blue boards with gilt titles. In fine, unread condition and housed in a fine, unclipped jacket.

In The Bomber Mafia, 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?.