David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

considered building a massive network
of underground bomb shelters across
London, but they abandoned the plan out
of a fear that if they did, the people who
took refuge there would never come out.
They set up several psychiatric hospitals
just outside the city limits to handle what
they expected would be a flood of
psychological casualties. “There is
every chance,” the report stated, “that
this could cost us the war.”
In the fall of 1940, the long-
anticipated attack began. Over a period
of eight months—beginning with fifty-
seven consecutive nights of devastating
bombardment—German bombers
thundered across the skies above