An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943
by Rick Atkinson
An Army at Dawn is volume 1 of The Liberation Trilogy, American historian Rick Atkinson’s three books covering the Allies’ defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
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“I would actually recommend the whole Liberation Trilogy, because they’re all excellent and he means for you to read them together. He describes it as a triptych. Panel one is North Africa, panel two is the war in Italy and Sicily. And then panel three is D-Day and the European war. His point is that you cannot understand the success in Europe unless you watch the countries building their military from North Africa on—particularly the United States, which was totally unprepared to go into World War Two…What makes Atkinson so good is he tells two stories at the same time, and shows how they influence one another. There is the story of these men. And you get letters and so forth, he singles out maybe three as the key ones that you keep going back to. And that’s partly so when, inevitably, one of them dies, you’re just sad. But then he also talks about the commanders and that’s the second theme in the book.” Read more...
