The Bomber Mafia

Purchase The Bomber Mafia and receive the exclusive Bomber Mafia Listener’s Guide — a visual document of the making of The Bomber Mafia. The Listener’s Guide features additional commentary from Malcolm Gladwell, reflections on the production from producers and engineers, and archival photos from the period. The Listener’s Guide is only available from Pushkin Industries when you buy The Bomber Mafia.

Malcolm Gladwell’s exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war.

In The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times bestsellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage and his trademark insight to weave 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. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines 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 had a different view. This “Bomber Mafia” asked:  What if precision bombing could, just by taking out critical choke points — industrial or transportation hubs – cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?

In Revisionist History, Gladwell re-examines moments from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time. Fans of Revisionist History will recognize some of the characters from the last season of the podcast, but The Bomber Mafia expands on these episodes and includes new original interviews, archival footage, and a fresh analysis of one of the most important events in military history. Gladwell steps back from the bombing of Tokyo, the deadliest night of the war, and asks, “Was it worth it?” The attack 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 more by averting a planned US invasion.

Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. As a key member of the Bomber Mafia, Hansell’s theories of precision bombing had been foiled by bad weather and human error. 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.

Malcolm Gladwell’s new audiobook, The Bomber Mafia, is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war. You’ll hear the voices of generals, the sound of aircrafts and bombs crashing. This is history brought to life through the power of audio.

The Bomber Mafia is also available in print and ebook wherever books are sold. Visit gladwellbooks.com for more information.

 

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