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

London, dropping tens of thousands of
high-explosive bombs and more than a
million incendiary devices. Forty
thousand people were killed, and
another forty-six thousand were injured.
A million buildings were damaged or
destroyed. In the city’s East End, entire
neighborhoods were laid waste. It was
everything the British government
officials had feared—except that every
one of their predictions about how
Londoners would react turned out to be
wrong.
The panic never came. The
psychiatric hospitals built on the
outskirts of London were switched over
to military use because no one showed
up. Many women and children were