An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy

Description

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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 consider 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 from time to time poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the odd but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, 1st viscount montgomery of alamein, and Rommel.

Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson’s narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

In An Army at Dawn,, a comprehensive look at the 1942-1943 Allied invasion of North Africa, writer Rick Atkinson posits that the campaign was, at the side of the battles of Stalingrad and Midway, where the “Axis … ceaselessly lost the initiative” and the “fable of 3rd Reich invincibility was dissolved.” Additionally, it forestalled a premature and potentially disastrous cross-channel invasion of France and served as a grueling “testing ground” for an as-yet inexperienced American army. Lastly, by relegating Great Britain to what Atkinson calls the status of “junior partner” in the war effort, North Africa marked the beginning of American geopolitical hegemony. Even though his prose is infrequently overwrought, Atkinson’s account is a superior one, an agile, well-informed mix of informed strategic overview and intimate battlefield-and-barracks anecdotes. (Tobacco-starved soldiers took to smoking cigarettes made of toilet paper and eucalyptus leaves.) Especially interesting are Atkinson’s straightforward accounts of the many “feuds, tiffs and spats” among British and American commanders, politicians, and strategists and his honest assessments of their–and their soldiers’–performance and behavior, for better and for worse. This is an engrossing, extremely accessible account of a grim and too-continuously overlooked military campaign. –H. O’Billovich

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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 consider 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 from time to time poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the odd but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, 1st viscount montgomery of alamein, and Rommel.

Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson’s narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.