Sixty years after the event, the mass bombing of Germany still raises anxious thoughts, and reading these two impressive books is a sad experience. Jorg Friedrich's volume is the first comprehensive and deeply researched book on the subject written from a German point of view, while Marshall De Bruhl's study of what is widely regarded as the worst atrocity, the attack on Dresden in February 1945, is the best book on this subject I have read, obliterating the effect of the earlier and sensational work by David Irving, which we now know to be grossly exaggerated.