Malcolm Gladwell is always interesting.

Interesting and insightful.

“Blink.” “Outliers.” “David and Goliath.” “Talking to Strangers.”

His books delve into societal issues. Gladwell has looked into the concept of genius, how we talk to one another, etc. All told through numerous stories that dig deep and relate an idea.

His latest, “The Bomber Mafia,” is no different and, well, completely different.

Here, Gladwell tells the story of “A Dream, A Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War,” as the subtitle states.

The Bomber Mafia was a group of pre-World War II pilots who imagined precision bombing before the planes and technology were possible.

The Dream: Make bombing precise, use it to cripple the factories that build the parts of a nation’s war machine, and end a war with fewer casualties. A dream that came after the slaughter of a generation after World War I.

The Temptation: When atmospheric challenges and other conditions thwarted the tech that could make precision bombing of crucial manufacturing sites, to rely instead on carpet bombing and fire bombing of civilian populations.

The Longest Night: The long night when fire-bombing Japanese cities became the strategy.

Gladwell tells this tragic tale with his precise style. Like his other books, he inserts personal moments into the history. 

The book introduces familiar names such as Gen. Curtis LeMay as well as less familiar names such as Gen. Haywood Hansell. There’s the iconoclastic Dutch genius who created the technology of precision bombing and the pyromania of the chemists who created napalm.

 “The Bombing Mafia” is a thin book that is thick with stories, personalities and ideas. 

Gladwell at his best.