The Bomber Mafia

In a departure from the social psychology themes of his earlier books – The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, among them – New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell pursues a personal interest, one that only dedicated war buffs will likely share.

He introduces a cadre of Army Air Corps visionaries – dubbed the Bomber Mafia – who shared a dream: fleets of precision bombers leveling factories and destroying the enemy’s ability to fight. They believed this strategy would spare millions of lives. While more brutal tactics – like those of massive bombing strategist Curtis LeMay – prevailed, the Bomber Mafia spirit lives on in Gladwell’s prose.