"Watching a newsreel or flipping through an illustrated magazine at the beginning of the American war, you were likely to encounter a memorable image: the newly invented jeep, an elegant, slim-barreled 37-mm gun in tow, leaping over a hillock. Going very fast and looking as cute as Bambi, it flies into the air, and behind, the little gun bounces high off the ground on its springy tires. This graceful duo conveyed the firm impression of purposeful, resourceful intelligence going somewhere significant, and going there with speed, agility, and delicacy—almost wit." p. 3

"It is hard to embrace ironies like this because the human mind, avoid for clear meaning, experiences frustration and pain when confronted by events which seem purposeless or meaningless. Hence the all-but-universal impulse during the war to impute specific malign intent to every dropped bomb." p. 16

"A world in which such blunders are more common...