D-Day: the Battle for Normandy

I am working my way through Antony Beevor's fascinating D-Day: the Battle for Normandy. I am generally not a reader of military histories but was attracted to this by good reviews and a lingering guilt that I should know more about the largest and most impressive -- not to mention, significant -- military invasion in history. I have not been disappointed.

D-Day is constructed as a straight narrative of the events that unfolded between the June 6, 1944 allied invasion of France and the liberation of Paris in August of the same year. Beevor manages the seemingly impossible task of making this approach both informative and page-turningly engaging -- even more impressive given that every reader begins the book knowing the outcome. He does pause now and again to fill in background details, so you can pick D-Day up and start reading even if you know nothing about this phase of the war. Naturally, those readers who are well acquainted with WWII will get even more from this work.

I'll check back in with a complete review when I have finished it. (Of course, at nearly 600 pages, there is always the possibility that I may become distracted by some other shiny thing before then, good as this book may be....)


-Paul

Note: I am embarrassed to say that I never finished this. I did get distracted by other things. Someday I may return to it. What I did read was excellent and I have no doubt that it would have continued to be so had I stuck with it.