by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown & Company, 2021, 240 pages. History
Using a variety of interviews and primary sources, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the impact the concept of precision bombing had during World War II, and its varied successes when tried against both Germany and the Japanese. This book especially focuses on the decisions leading up to the deadliest night of World War II—the bombing of Tokyo. Although this book is a great read, listen to this book if you can, since it was first created as an audiobook/podcast hybrid, then adapted into a written book. The listening experience is incredibly rich, with interviews and clips that highlight Gladwell’s points about how the use of precision bombing changed the way we fight.
If you like The Bomber Mafia you might also like:
by Erik Larson
Crown, 2020, 585 pages. History
Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.
by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
Alfred A. Knopf, 2017, 640 pages. History
Those who enjoy the high production quality of Gladwell’s Bomber Mafia will enjoy this book based on the Ken Burns documentary series. Continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed collaborations, the authors draw on dozens and dozens of interviews in America and Vietnam to give us the perspectives of people involved at all levels of the war—US and Vietnamese soldiers and their families, high-level officials in America and Vietnam, antiwar protestors, POWs, and many more. Rather than taking sides, the book seeks to understand why the war happened the way it did, and to clarify its complicated legacy.
by David Grann
Doubleday, 2016, 338 pages. Nonfiction
The Bomber Mafia talks about the development of the US Air Force; Killers of the Flower Moon talks about an interesting true crime story that helped guide the formation of the FBI. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case and slowly unveiled on the of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
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