The publishers claim “This book is the first serious reappraisal for more than twenty years….” The bombing of Dresden has become a byword for aerial bombing, it is still a controversial decision some sixty years later. As the last ‘serious’ assessment of this significant event was by the discredited David Irving, Frederick Taylor obviously felt obliged to discredit the various myths that now surround 13th February 1945. The author has spent time on this, which does take the book off-task, but as this is mainly in the detailed appendixes the reader does not always need to take these little diversions. This all-encompassing study of the bombing of Dresden begins with an assessment of Saxony, the reader gathers the impression of a rich, cultural city, dragged into the depths by Nazi Germany, then traumatised by an horrific air raid. This book is a study of air warfare, with Dresden as the culmination of early 20th Century developments, in this new method of attack. Reading this book one comes to understand why Dresden is unique, but has also come to be associated with Guernica and Hiroshima; two very different horrific air raids. All aspects of the raid are considered, the narrative is disturbing, the eyewitness accounts draw in the reader, the book is obviously well researched, making this the definitive account of an event, which still managed to shock and cause debate to this day.