The Bomber Mafia: A Tale of Innovation and Obsession

The Bomber Mafia is a novel that explores the obsession with making bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air, and the story of how this dream was put to the test. It follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius, Winston Churchill's best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists, a brilliant pilot, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 02 June 2022
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

The New York Times bestseller, a parable written for the age of technological disruption, is brilliantly told by the Sunday Times. 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?

Weight: 202g
Dimension: 129 x 197 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780141998374