D-Day: The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor

I have read a large number of Antony Beevors books - Stalingrad, Berlin and The Hisory of the Spanish Civil War. They are all excellent - not a word I use a lot.

This book is several hundred pages long but compulsive reading - full of fact and anecdote in equal measure. War is not glamourised nor is this book partisan - American, British, Canadian, Germans are described equally - a work of stature.

Some reviews

Guardian

The pleasure of this book lies in the vividness of an episodic narrative, backed up by judicious use of quotation. Moving from the weather drama to surveillance of the assault beaches, to individual accounts of each beach, to the breakout for Paris, the action never lets up.

Independent

Beevor does battle history consummately, but he does something more than battle history. His account of the battle for Normandy combines clarity and density. The narrative has a characteristic texture. It is not so much the face of battle as the very pores.

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy