After D-Day in Europe

Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany by Stephen E. Ambrose

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book took me forever to read...almost a month! It's not that it's very long (just under 500 pages), but that it's dense. It probably wasn't the best choice for a 'summer read' - but it was still a pretty good book.

Ambrose (who wrote the awesome book "Band of Brothers") is a military historian for military historians. If you're out of the look (like I am), some of the details in his book can get heavy and difficult to handle. Once I decided to read this book as a collection of thousands of short stories about WWII in Europe post D-Day, it became a lot easier to read. If you're gonna try to keep track of all the divisions, corps, companies, sergeants, captains, lieutenants and privates that he writes about...good luck!

I've always been a bit of a history buff, and WWII has had special interest for me. Ambrose does a great job of exploring post D-Day Europe from the perspective of the junior officers and NCOs on the front line. And in traditional Ambrose style, he lets most of the men and women talk for themselves by heavily quoting from memoirs (mostly unpublished), oral histories, interviews, letters, etc.

Don't expect a plot...there isn't one. In fact, the chronological time line can get convoluted and shaky at times. But if you're interested in interesting and new tidbits of information about the war, I think this is a great place to start.



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