A History of Bombing

I am still trying to decide if I liked the way the information was presented in this book. I think the jumping around worked in this instance but I wouldn't like this technique to catch on with other writers. Lindqvist contradicts the standard narratives we are taught in the UK about the motives and morality of the Western powers during the 20th Century. It is a shocking and beautifully written book.

Anyone with an interest in how our society is the way it is should read this book. Anyone with an interest in 20th Century history should read this book. Particularly those interested in the history of the 2nd World War and the part played by Britain and the Allies who have been taught the accepted narrative of our history in school and via the media. In fact, this book should be required reading as part of British history course curriculums. The Humanity of the author is equalled only by the inhumanity he graphically describes. This book illustrates the calmly, calculated methods used by intelligent, respected human beings to have acts of mass murder committed on their behalf against their fellow human beings. The only reason I don't give 4 Stars, as I would with Lindquist's 'Exterminate All The Brutes' is the occasional difficulty encountered on the odd occasion one puts the book down then picks it up trying to find where one left off (it's designed to read in sections, requiring the reader to move from numbered section to numbered section rather than page to page). I can't imagine what the Kindle version is like to read, if there is one.

Sven Lindquist A history of bombing Lindquist has amassed a body of evidence in this enlightening history of bombing warfare, making use of a huge range of historical sources. He arranges them in a somewhat unique way, so that they can speak for themselves and, through the course of the book, Lindquist allows the sheer weight of the evidence to draw his reader along the many possible paths through his book toward the one inevitable conclusion. Lindquist examines bombing as military strategy, considers its cultural context and, most powerfully, takes on the oft-touted concept of 'Precision bombing'. Some readers might find it interesting to also know that Lindquist was himself bombed as a child. This doesn't so much skew the writer's arguments as, from time to time, lend him a unique perspective on them. By the end of Lindquist's book we are left with the realisation that the term 'Precision bombing' has been so misused as to be virtually redundant, little more than the PR-speak governments over three generations have used to forestall objection to bombing campaigns conducted, in effect, against civilian populations: 'precision bombing' has been the catch-all moral and political get-out clause. Lindquist traces so-called 'Precision bombing' campaigns throughout human history and it quickly becomes clear that from the deliberate WW2 strategy of area bombing in key german towns to the 'shock and awe' tactics in Iraq, 'precision bombing' has more often than not turned out to be straightforward area bombing, intended to crudely terrorise and cow the general population, rather than anything else. Further to that last point, in terms of the long term effectiveness of bombing as a military strategy, Lindquist makes a good case for bombing being premised on two fundamentally faulty beliefs: 1. That human beings will be cowed and supplicant to the bombers, rather than united in common cause against them; 2. That bombs can and will differentiate, except in extreme instances, between the target and the innocent. Lindquist's evidence is: they won't. Bombs are by very definition a crude tool. Even with the most modern technology, the 'target' and the innocents are living side by side, harm done to innocents is an intractable and inevitable part of bombing which no talk of 'Precision' can erase. 'Collateral damage' is the military term for the women, children, infants and other innocents, young and old, who are killed, maimed, crushed, burned or buried under the rubble. 'Collateral damage' makes the child amputees in the nearby hospital sound secondary to the main point. Makes all that damage seem containable, clinical, emotionally safe information for military personnel and the public to handle. Lindquist considers the cultural milieu of bombing: often noting how bombs and bombing, by all and any sides, are tied up irrevocably wi...

The book would have been interesting if written as a normal book. The game Lindqvist makes one go through jumping all over the book to read a paragraph ere and a paragraph there is annoying, disruptive, irritating and waste of the readers time.

I think the format that required the reader to skip pages to continue a story was obnoxious, but other than that, a good read.