Selected Product: | An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy (The Liberation Trilogy) Paperback Edition: Revised Author: Rick Atkinson Publisher: Holt Paperbacks Release Date: 2007-05-15 ISBN-10: 0805087249 ISBN-13: 9780805087246 List Price: $17.00 Average Customer Rating: | | Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 ISBN-10: 0307263517 ISBN-13: 9780307263513 List Price:$35.00 The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War ISBN-10: 1401300529 ISBN-13: 9781401300524 List Price:$35.00 |
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In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa
The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.
Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.
Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa. Good Read | Customer Rating: | | This book is a good read for history buff or just the regular person wanting to know more about WWII | It's a Page Turner | Customer Rating: | | Outstanding. Tight writing moves the narrative along quickly, with plenty of fascinating information. The initial incompetence of the American war effort is second only to the perpetual incompetence of the French. Eisenhower and Patton learn the ropes. Highly recommended. (I have the Kindle version, and the maps are illegible.) | A terrific book. | Customer Rating: | | I was very disappointed in one of Atkinson's later books (In the Company of Soldiers), in which his Washington Post political POV was evident throughout, but this one is top drawer. Any WWII reader or armchair general will thoroughly enjoy it. | Poorly Written, Poorly Constructed | Customer Rating: | My two big loves in military history are Gettysburg and Waterloo. I've read many, many books on both topics and love a well written, narrative history. Stephen Sears' classic on Gettysburg is the exemplar.
Rick Atkinson is probably a fine journalist. He is, however, a very poor historian. But perhaps I'm not being fair. What I can say with certainty is that he is a poor writer of history. I'm shocked that this book actually won the Pulitzer.
An Army at Dawn is little more than a collection of short vignettes tied together thematically by area of operations and globally by the campaign. But the narrative suffers from a lack of cohesiveness. Atkinson jumps around aimlessly, often losing me in the process. In his effort to tell a grand story of Americans in battle, he winds up telling so many little stories in so many settings that I grew weary trying to keep up with it all. For example, his presentation of the fighting around Oran was so spread out and disjointed that the battle for the city became incoherent.
The quality of the maps is okay, but the publisher should have repeated the maps as the narrative continued, adding detail discussed at that point. I didn't enjoy having to flip back and forth between text and maps and then scrutinizing the maps to find the troop movement being discussed.
This is a fine book for the reader with no real interest in the history of the North Africa campaign. For those of us who take our history a bit more seriously, I recommend passing on this. | Forgotten Corner of WW2 | Customer Rating: | This was a very interesting read as it reviewed, in detail, the entrance of Americans into WW2. We certainly started slow, but rather quickly picked up the pace and feel for combat. I liked the "warts and all" depictions of all the major players and think that the author told the story as it really stands in history. |
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