Friday Reads: The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Happy Friday! Today, Adam Pellman tells us about his new read, Rick Atkinson's The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945.

Adam Pellman is reading The Guns at Last Light: 

The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson

This book is the third volume in journalist and historian Rick Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy," a sweeping account of the Allied effort to liberate Europe during World War II. The first book in the trilogy chronicled the war in North Africa, and the second detailed the invasions of Sicily and Italy. This third volume begins with the Normandy invasion in June of 1944, and I timed my reading so that I would start the book around the anniversary of the invasion.

Atkinson does an incredible job of bringing the events and personalities of the war to life, drawing heavily from firsthand accounts, diaries, and personal correspondence, along with a wealth of other primary source materials. The amount of research that went into this trilogy is staggering (this volume alone includes 200 pages of bibliographical references), and the details Atkinson includes make for a very engaging and eye-opening read. For example, by the time of the invasion, there were over 1.5 million American GIs in Britain, a figure that was higher than the population of many U.S. states at the time. So many GIs impregnated British women that road signs cautioned, "To all GIs: please drive carefully, that child may be yours." It's colorful details like these that really make history come alive.