I knew the story, but Rhodes really made it... sing is the wrong word. Threnodize I guess we have it. I think it's a defining story of the United States, the 'West', some slice of civilization.

I did not know all of the background, like his telling of the recent birth of strategic bombing, i.e. conscious bombing of non-combatants, as a thing to be done by non-terrorists. One detail I found remarkable was the early thinking about aerial bombing, before it had ever really been done: some people thought of aerial bombing as a superweapon that would be completely unwithstandable, and even as a weapon that would end war.