About book The Guns At Last Light: The War In Western Europe, 1944-1945 (2013)
First of all, my IQ went up just because of the astounding vocabulary of Atkinson. After awhile I got tired of reaching for my dictionary and just used plain old context to hazard a guess at some of the new words (new to me, at least) that popped up on each page.The level of detail is truly impressive, more so than Stephen Hart's epic The Great War about WWI. This is my first of the Liberation Trilogy books and now I must go back and read the first two. I learned much about the inner workings of SHAEF, which is invaluable because it breaks down the glass wall of invincibility we normally erect around our military leaders. True, they accomplished great tasks, but at the end of the day, it was the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and pilots, along with millions of Allies, who died for the cause that we remember. Atkinson's The Guns at Last Light will help us remember their sacrifice for generations to come. This is the final book of a wonderful series for anyone seriously interested in WWII history. I've been casually reading WWII history for 45 years and felt that I was fairly well informed on the topic. I discovered I wasn't. As well, I thoroughly enjoyed his writing and organization. The subject matter can become numbing and he seems to sense this and intersperses little side accounts that let one sort of regroup. The detail is there for the pure historian yet the text moves well for the less dedicated. Regarding the leading characters, Atkinson pulls no punches. He takes several of the iconic figures and lays bare their serious flaws. There were several times that I honestly wished Ike had asked everyone else to step out of the room and then just beaten Montgomery to a pulp. It might have shortened the war. Several times, I found it necessary to step away for a day or so to be able just to get my head around the magnitude of suffering and waste that WWII was rife with. It's a heavy story.
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Very good account of war on the western front after D Day until the end
—joshfoy
