Editorial
Reviews
From
Publishers Weekly
Using
eyewitness accounts from both sides of
the battlefield, Ambrose reconstructs
the invasion that turned the tables of
WWII in favor of the allies.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information,
Inc.
From
Library Journal
World War II buffs have always liked books
about the Normandy invasions, but most
popular accounts are now several years
old. Ambrose has updated the familiar
story of the massive amphibious landings
with new information, deft historical
perspective, and a gripping narrative.
Several
opening chapters about the strategic situation
and the laborious preparations for the
invasion keep this book from becoming
just another battlefield drama. His portraits
of the various military commanders are
superb. Numerous interviews with Allied
veterans provide fresh material for the
vital human element of the story, and
accounts from German survivors show the
enemy's viewpoint. The result is the best
popular history since Max Hastings's vigorous
Overload: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy
(LJ 6/1/84), detailed enough for the historian
yet with plenty of action for the lay
reader. Recommended for public and military
collections.
--Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History
Prog., Edwards AFB
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information,
Inc.
From
Booklist
An expert on D-Day, Ambrose heads a premier
oral history archive based in New Orleans.
He has written invasion-related narratives
on both the macro (a two-volume biography
of General Eisenhower, 1983 and 1991)
and the micro (Band of Brothers: E Company,
501st Regiment, 1992) scales. This fiftieth
anniversary salvo brackets the big and
small as it finds the range on its target:
the critical first hours of American landings
on Utah and Omaha Beaches, and concurrent
paratroop drops behind the lines. Ambrose
calls his text a "love song to democracy."
Since it draws from some 1200 eyewitness
testimonials collected in his archive,
however, his book might more accurately
be thought of as an organization of the
chaotic, terrifying, and courageous experiences
of the first soldiers to face the Nazi
hellfire. An excellent editor of the raw
material, who knows Pointe du Hoc as if
he had scaled it himself, Ambrose situates
his pungent, laconic, and gruesome quotations
at virtually the exact spots where they
were uttered, and he is completely unbashful
in his patriotic reverence for the sacrifices
these men made. A consuming and highly
readable memorial to the day's infantry-unit
victors--one that World War II veterans
will demand in strength. Ambrose's is
the leading and required element in the
coming wave of commemorative books. (Watch
for the round-up review in the May 1 Booklist)
Gilbert Taylor
From
Kirkus Reviews
A splendid, moving, and authoritative
account of the most decisive day of WW
II by Ambrose (History/Univ. of New Orleans),
whose massive biographies of Eisenhower
and Nixon have won widespread praise.
Based on ``the most extensive first-person,
I-was-there collection of memoirs of a
single battle in existence,'' Ambrose
moves easily between the strategy of each
side and the individual recollections
of the battle. He conveys not only the
magnitude of the enterprise but its complexity.
He also suggests some significant changes
to the conventional interpretation of
the war, most notably in the view hitherto
taken about the respective quality of
leadership and soldiers on each side.
He contradicts the belief in the superiority
of the German soldiers and says that the
higher losses they inflicted against the
Anglo-American armies derived from the
necessity for the latter to take the offensive.
The German army was, he writes, ``inferior
in all respects (except for weaponry,
especially the 88s and the machine guns)
to its allied opponents.'' He call Rommel's
plan to stop the Allied invasion on the
beach ``one of the greatest blunders in
military history,'' and he compares the
strategy to that of the French Maginot
line. By contrast, he argues that Eisenhower's
judgment was generally right and that
he not only inspired his subordinates
but also showed courage in rejecting suggestions
for an alternative strategy from Army
Chief of Staff George Marshall. But most
memorable in the account are the tales
of individual heroism, from the 16-year-old
French girl who, with a group of companions,
paralyzed the German Second Panzer Division
by removing the axle grease from its transporters
and substituting an abrasive, to the Canadian
soldier who threw himself down on barbed
wire to enable his companions to use his
body as a ladder. A brilliant account
that blends perfectly the human and the
strategic dimensions of this great battle.
(First printing of 100,000; first serial
to U.S. News & World Report; Book-of-the-
Month Club main selection; History Book
Club main selection) -- Copyright ©1994,
Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York
Times
Reading this history, you can understand
why for so many of its participants, despite
all the death surrounding them, life revealed
itself in that moment at that place.
Ingram
Capturing the glory and suspense of the
invasion that changed the course of World
War II, a narrative based on hundreds
of eyewitness accounts of veterans and
government and private archives creates
a portrait of the monumental battle. Reprint.
100,000 first printing. NYT.
Amazon.com
Published to mark the 50th anniversary
of the invasion of Normandy, Stephen E.
Ambrose's D-Day: June 6, 1944 relies on
over 1,400 interviews with veterans, as
well as prodigious research in military
archives on both sides of the Atlantic.
He provides a comprehensive history of
the invasion which also eloquently testifies
as to how common soldiers performed extraordinary
feats. A major theme of the book, upon
which Ambrose would later expand in Citizen
Soldiers, is how the soldiers from the
democratic Allied nations rose to the
occasion and outperformed German troops
thought to be invincible. The many small
stories that Ambrose collected from paratroopers,
sailors, infantrymen, and civilians make
the excitement, confusion, and sheer terror
of D-day come alive on the page. --Robert
McNamara |
