This is an I-Heart podcast.

Hello there, Pushkin listeners.

This is Malcolm Gladwell.

I'm the president of Pushkin Industries and host of revisionist history,

but I'm here today as an author. I've written half a dozen books such as outliers and blink,

but my new book, The Bomber Mafia, is something different. First, it's a work of history,

telling the story of how a new technology, air power, upended the nature of

modern warfare during the Second World War. It's also the first book I wrote to be heard

rather than read. You can get the print version of the bomber mafia, wherever you usually get your

books, and I love my readers, but I urge you to listen.

The Bomber Mafia is not your typical audiobook. I didn't record it in a booth, solitary and pedantic.

I worked with a whole team of sound engineers, researchers, editors, musicians, wizards of every kind.

They were building the mightiest aircraft in history.

I mean, would you rather I just read some torpid rudderly nonsense like

the B-29 bomber droned on through the night sky?

Or would you rather hear it for yourself?

And the assembled airmen will listen to words that a few years ago would have been fantastic,

but today rolled casually off a briefing officer's lips.

The target gentleman is Japan.

When I was researching, I went to Maxwell Air Force Base to dig through a mountain of tapes,

interviews with some of the most important military figures of the Second World War.

These were the voices of people I'd only ever read about in history books.

...