The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1945

Biff83 · V.I.P. Joined: Jul 10, 2007 Posts: 1263 Location: Florida

Rick Atkinson's first volume is his Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn which chronicled the North Africa campaign, garnered him a worthy Pulitzer Prize a few years ago. His recently released second installment, The Day of Battle, will make him a frontrunner for the Pulitzer once again. Atkinson is a master of narrative history like the Civil War's two best writers (IMHO), Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote. If you have an interest in history and/or World War II, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of his book or put it on your Christmas list. I received my preordered copy late last week and am about halfway through. Riveting.

Here's a link to Atkinson's website.
www.liberationtrilogy.com/

Biff

DaveFerro · Mem Joined: Jul 13, 2007 Posts: 131 Location: Auburn NY

Read this book last year and highly recommend it as it has the civilian viewpoint as well with interviews and photos of the Italian families who were caught in the middle. Did not find anything about our families' villages, but found out that the 101st Airborne started out for Palermo west of Agrigento, so not far from my grandfather's town of Siculiana. More research needed and the bibliography is extensive, with some for Italian government records of "incidents" by Allied troops against civilians, which they kept good records of. Not sure of records of crimes by the Nazis.

Unfortunately not much about British Army, which was in the Molise and Abruzzo provinces, where my other relatives are from.

Dave