The Bomber Mafia ⭑⭑⭑⭑

Genre: Nonfiction

US Publication: April 27, 2021

Print: 256 pages

Audio: 5 hours 14 minutes

Confetti Rating: 4 stars

REVIEW:

Malcolm Gladwell has a brand new book, and it’s different than his previous ones. You can easily tell this by its vibrant ocean-blue cover, which is quite a departure from the text-on-white-background style used on all his others.

I have a love/indifference thing going with Gladwell. If he writes something, I’m going to listen to the audiobook of it, no question. Yet I end up rating each one 3 stars. The pattern seems to be that he spends an entire book telling and showing me what his thesis is, and inevitably at its end I think, “So what was the point of all that?” (Notable exception here is Outliers. Read that one if you haven’t.)

In The Bomber Mafia, he hones in on a specific period of history. In the wake of millions of casualties from ground warfare in World War I, a group of US military men focused on creating a bombing system that would be so accurate that it could take out very specific targets that would cripple enemies while minimizing human loss. The system was then implemented in World War II to varying results.

Because I was able to focus on the book as a historical text, I had much more success following along. The audiobook is an experience in itself, complete with sound effects, music, and old interviews from the men he profiles (and even some of their bombings’ survivors). This is a case where the audiobook surely trumps the print version. In fact, Gladwell points out that the audio format is the original text, and the hardback is the secondary product.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend The Bomber Mafia to anyone with even a remote interest in the history of warfare. The audiobook is currently available on the Hoopla library app for immediate download.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century.

'The Bomber Mafia is a case study in how dreams go awry. When some shiny new idea drops from the heavens, it does not land softly in our laps. It lands hard, on the ground, and shatters.'

In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past?

This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test. The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War.

In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And what is the price of progress?