"On a clear, moonlit night in 1944, RAF Bomber Command launched a "maximum effort" raid on the German city of Nuremberg. It was a disaster. German night fighters got into the bomber stream early on, and the bombers suffered the highest losses of the war while the intended target was barely damaged. Using firsthand accounts, Mr. Middlebrook follows the planning, preparation and execution of the operation in meticulous detail, but he does more than that: Employing hundreds of eyewitness accounts, he shows the raid from the point of view of the German defenses and the civilians on the ground. Factual and analytical, this is a portrait of mechanized warfare at the level of personal experience."--The Wall Street Journal