1/ Malcolm @gladwell concludes his new book celebrating the coming of humane war as an unalloyed good (after a well-told story of how those who imagined it failed in the early going only to triumph in the long run).

2/ Amazingly well-written, as you’d expect. https://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Mafia-Temptation-Longest-Second/dp/0316296619

3/ Of course, Gladwell vastly oversimplifies a messy reality, notably by omitting the colonial origins of civilian bombing and the racialization of the Pacific war. Here, Sven Lindqvist retains all his greatness. https://www.amazon.com/History-Bombing-Sven-Lindqvist/dp/1565848160/

4/ But the deepest problem with the book is that it treats without ambivalence a morality it projects backward by magnifying it in the past. Truth is, humane war is all our own, and not entirely flatteringly. For another view of air war past and present: https://www.amazon.com/Humane-United-States-Abandoned-Reinvented/dp/0374173702/