Napalm : an American biography
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-300) and index.

Napalm, incendiary gel that sticks to skin and burns to the bone, came into the world on Valentine{u2019}s Day 1942 at a secret Harvard war research laboratory. On March 9, 1945, it created an inferno that killed over 87,500 people in Tokyo{u2014}more than died in the atomic explosions at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It went on to incinerate sixty-four of Japan{u2019}s largest cities. The Bomb got the press, but napalm did the work. Robert Neer has written the first history of napalm, from its inaugural test on the Harvard College soccer field, to a Marine Corps plan to attack Japan with millions of bats armed with tiny napalm time bombs, to the reflections of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a girl who knew firsthand about its power and its morality.