PanThe Age (AUS)Gladwell sincerely seems to believe his ending happened. That is, he believes the slaughter by US bombers of hundreds of thousands of Japanese people forced Tokyo to surrender by breaking their will to fight. In his mind, the saturation bombing of the Japanese was not only justifiable, it was also commendable ... This conclusion is not merely wrong: it is a complete misreading of history—Japanese history. Gladwell cites not one Japanese war-time source, leaving the reader to assume that Tokyo begged to surrender in the face of LeMay’s hurricane of fire. They didn’t ... Gladwell is not being callous. He truly believes this. His error stems from his anti-historical method ... He seizes on facts that support his idea and rejects those that don’t. He peppers this recipe with a few buccaneering characters, dressed in a limpid prose that is cheerfully, perennially, sunny side up ... Gladwell presents a false dichotomy between Hansell’s precision strikes and LeMay’s civilian massacres. He never considers other factors. But the truth is an unwelcome intruder at Gladwell’s banquet, where \'our man won!\' is the toast of the night.
