El Clan de Los Bombarderos/ The Bomber Mafia

LA SEGUNDA GUERRA MUNDIAL CONTADA DESDE EL AIRE

Qu? ocurre cuando la tecnolog?a y las mejores intenciones chocan en el fragor de la batalla? Durante los a?os previos a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en una base a?rea de Alabama, un grupo de pilotos renegados forj? una idea radical. Qu? pasar?a si los bombardeos fueran tan precisos como para que las guerras pudieran librarse solamente desde el aire? Podr?an los brutales enfrentamientos entre los ej?rcitos de tierra convertirse en cosa del pasado? Este libro cuenta lo que ocurri? cuando se intent? llevar a la pr?ctica ese sue?o. Malcolm Gladwell sigue los pasos de un genio holand?s y su ordenador anal?gico casero, del grupo de cient?ficos pir?manos de Harvard que inventaron el napalm, de un brillante piloto que cantaba tonadas a su equipo y del comandante que ordenar?a uno de los ataques m?s sangrientos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. A su m?s puro estilo, Gladwell les saca todo el jugo a estos personajes fascinantes y nos conduce ?gilmente a trav?s de una serie de dilemas que cambiaron el rumbo de la historia para preguntarnos cu?l puede llegar a ser el precio del progreso. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A "truly compelling" book --Good Morning America

New York Times bestseller that explores how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war --from the creator and host of the podcast Revisionist History. In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves 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 to examine 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, the "Bomber Mafia," asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war 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 even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, "Was it worth it?" Things might have gone differently had LeMay's predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but 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. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.