A worthy commemoration of a key historical moment, the 75th anniversary of which falls in 2019.
Anecdotal history of D-Day, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe.
As historian and journalist Milton’s (Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat, 2017, etc.) busy title suggests, the Normandy landings involved a vast machinery hinging on conditions of weather and tides and the hope that the German enemy would be surprised. In this skillfully woven narrative, the author depicts the complexity of Operation Overlord. In the predawn hours of D-Day, for instance, the operational planning officer had to secure signoffs from several senior commanders involved, which “was more time-consuming than he expected,” especially when the British air marshal began proofreading the orders, “sure that in detail lay victory.” The British meteorologists were cautious, the Americans perhaps too optimistic, but somehow the invasion was launched. Meanwhile, on the German side of the Channel, an observer predicted the landings nearly to the minute only to have his intelligence ignored. When news arrived of massive airborne landings behind the German lines, an argument broke out over whether “the paratroopers were merely liaison parties sent to help the French resistance.” For its part, the Resistance was present and active on the scene, while French civilians rendered aid as they were able—though in one memorable episode, a young French man had to turn over a badly wounded American paratrooper to the Germans in order to get him medical treatment. Milton’s narrative is episodic, much in the spirit of the book that looms over the literature of Overlord, Cornelius Ryan’s Longest Day (1959), populated by near-stock figures like a young American captain who “was a bulldozer of a man, with a thickset face and pronounced nose,” and a British “bruiser built of sinew and muscle” who single-handedly stormed a German bunker, earning a Victoria Cross for his troubles. World War II buffs will be pleased to see the tradition continue here.
A worthy commemoration of a key historical moment, the 75th anniversary of which falls in 2019.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-13492-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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