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

of their office towers had been reduced
to rubble not just once but every night
for two and a half months?
The typical explanation for the
reaction of Londoners is the British
“stiff upper lip”—the stoicism said to be
inherent in the English character. (Not
surprisingly, this is the explanation most
favored by the British themselves.) But
one of the things that soon became clear
was that it wasn’t just the British who
behaved this way. Civilians from other
countries also turned out to be
unexpectedly resilient in the face of
bombing. Bombing, it became clear,
didn’t have the effect that everyone had
thought it would have. It wasn’t until the