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

<p><b>This <i>New York Times</i> Book Review Editors' Choice explores how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war.</b></p> In <i>The Bomber Mafia</i><i>, </i> 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. <p/>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 <i>and</i> make war far less lethal? <p/>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 <i>The Bomber Mafia, </i>Gladwell asks, "Was it worth it?" <p/>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. <i>The Bomber Mafia </i>is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.<br><br><b>Author:</b> Malcolm Gladwell<br>