I'm being asked where the title of my new book "One Fell Swoop" comes from. It's not just a familiar phrase. It's a quote from Shakespeare's "Macbeth." When Macduff is told that Macbeth has murdered his wife and children he cries,

"What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell swoop?"

The image is of a bird of prey flying down upon helpless domestic birds. We now call a hawk's dive a "stoop," but "swoop" seems better.