Audiobook Review: The Bomber Mafia
I recently listened to the audiobook The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell and his production team. The audiobook was published in 2021. I was inspired to listen after finishing his MasterClass, Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing, having read most of his other books, and listening to podcasts in his network, Pushkin Industries. (The podcast Cautionary Tales, which I reviewed in 2023, is part of the network.) I was intrigued by the concept of a book created audio-first, rather than text-first, as it expanded upon material first presented on his podcast, Revisionist History. Listening time was 5 hours and 14 minutes, and I listened to the book for free through the Libby app, available with a public library card. The book also appears in physical and digital text forms at 256 pages in length. Additionally, during the audiobook, Gladwell mentions a 28-page listener’s guide with original photographs of people in the book and the story behind creating the audiobook. This is worth looking at, although it was lighter on visual content than I expected.
As common for Gladwell books, the story arc was not immediately clear. It began in medias res as the United States Army Air Corps changed which major general would be in charge of the air base on recently captured Maria Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean during the early days of 1945. Terse Curtis LeMay replaced charismatic Haywood S. Hansell, setting up the pair to be portrayed as polar opposites throughout the story. The rest of the book centered around these two men along with the many other men who contributed to the creation of war materials. The most commonly cited were two airplanes: B-17 Flying Fortress and B-29 Superfortress. Both were designed to carry bombs a long distance to drop on enemy targets. Other technology included the invention of the Norden bombsight, napalm, and atomic bombs. As for the title, this referred to a doctrine held by a few early Army Air Corps pilots that bombings should take place from a high altitude during the day and target very specific locations. Scientific discoveries made throughout the story soon proved this goal to be impossible due to limitations of technology at the time.
Gladwell is interested in how things work, and he did a good job explaining what pieces needed to come together. As someone not as interested in military history, although I am good at tactics and have a strong background in the period, I had no difficulty following his explanations in most cases. The barrage of names did occasionally overwhelm, particularly when so many of the people involved felt like a copy-paste despite tweaks to life circumstance and personality. This may be why I felt the polarity set up between LeMay and Hansell was not successful. Yes, the men came from different backgrounds: Hansell was privileged, while LeMay was poor. Yes, they had contrasting personalities, in part a product of how they were raised. However, a love of flying fast in relatively untested aircraft tends to appear in a niche demographic, and I found the men to have more similarities than differences, especially considering their differences from me. Gladwell has mentioned his mission to write a fair portrayal of real people, even encouraging his listeners and readers root for the characters in his books. Instead, I found myself disliking many of the characters more each time Gladwell attempted to make them relatable or generate an empathetic response.
The most successful part of this book was its sound design. In the listener’s guide, Gladwell described how producers chose the exact sound to fit with what was being described, from the correct roar of an airplane engine from archival tape to the eerie sound of bombs dropping on a defenseless Japanese village. When quotes from a key character had been caught on film, the audio was played. This allowed me to feel like I was listening to live conversations, nearly in the room with people who shaped the outcome of World War II. I recognized at least one recording from another podcast, “Tokyo Rose: World War II’s Most Controversial Radio DJ” by Twenty Thousand Hertz, which made me realize that some archive recordings in the audiobook may have been confusing without my prior knowledge. This also led me to consider how this book was different from a podcast season despite its similarity in style. The biggest difference was the lack of advertising breaks, which occur every ten to fifteen minutes in sponsored podcasts. Some chapters did begin to feel long, a combination of actual length, the wealth of information packed into every section, an occasional lack of a direction or goal, and the expectation of breaks where I would pause the audio and do something else before returning.
This audiobook is a good choice for anyone interest in the Second World War, military history, American history, and airplanes. People who enjoy dissecting sound design will have fun listening to a complex layering of narrative, interviews, sound effects, and music. Some readers will appreciate Gladwell’s sincere attempt to balance multiple perspectives in his book, including an oral history of a Japanese bombing survivor and a conversation between modern United State Air Force leaders. However, readers may be disappointed to find the book dominated by angry white men to the point that characters feel unintentionally stereotypical at times. Additionally, Gladwell presents facts using language that is accessible to a broad range of curious people and to support his argument. This sometimes causes facts to be oversimplified, so technical experts may find them inaccurate. Overall, this is a decent demonstration of where audiobooks may be going. I look forward to hearing other stories told in this format.
Abby Epplett’s Rating System
Experience: 7/10
Accessibility: 9/10