The Bomber Mafia

Resumen del libro

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'A parable written for the age of technological disruption . . .

brilliantly told' 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?

Biografía del autor

(born September 3, 1963) is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. 1 He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has written five books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009), a collection of his journalism, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013). All five books were on The New York Times Best Seller list.<br><br>Gladwell's books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and make frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada on June 30, 2011<br><br><br><br>Malcolm Gladwell (Inglaterra, 1963) escribe habitualmente, desde 1996, para la revista The New Yorker. Es autor de Inteligencia intuitiva (Punto de Lectura, 2006), La clave del éxito. The Tipping Point (Taurus, 2007) y Fuera de serie (Punto de Lectura 2010), que han ocupado, todos ellos, primeros puestos en las listas internacionales de ventas. Antes de unirse a The New Yorker, trabajó como reportero para The Washington Post, del que cubría las secciones de Negocios y Ciencia y dirigió la oficina de Nueva York.