This book should be titled "US Airborne and Omaha Beach on D-Day." After a start that discusses the great work of British paratroops Ambrose promises to give a complete look at the battle. But he only tells the US side of the story. It is frustrating how American writers can arrogantly say they are telling the complete story of a battle when dismissing all that is not about them. While admitting the landing at Juno beach was as difficult and bloody for the Canadians as the landing at Omaha was for the Americans (which he dissects in great detail and builds pedestals for all the brave GIs who dared set foot on the beach) he gives but a sentence to the Canadians. He fails to mention the Canadians did not drop their tanks at the bottom of the channel and executed that part of the landing exponentially better than the Yanks. He devotes chapters to the tiny successes of the screw-up American airborne troops that so poorly executed their plans that day. But he has just one obligatory mention of the Canadians and only one specific detail of the Brit paratroops.

We get it Steve, you love the old airborne guys. You love the guy that got hooked on the steeple and you don't care what the Brits and especially the Canadians did that day.

Fine.

Just don't claim to be writing about the entire battle. ( )

Good, detailed history of the Normandy invasion. ( )

Brilliant story of D-Day. It pulls no punches, does not romanticize nor condemn. ( )

Stephen Ambrose presents this dramatic account of D-Day based upon newly released archives, interviews with veterans from both sides of the conflict as well as his own considerable knowledge of WWII. It is quite obvious that Ambrose connects with veterans of all levels of rank and all types of background; he admires and appreciates them and the veterans in turn trust him and reveal stories perhaps never told before. It is these stories that flesh out the historical structure of the events of June 6, 1944 and create the drama, heartbreak and pride that was D-Day. ( )

Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, Stephen E. Ambrose's D-Day: June 6, 1944 relies on over 1,400 interviews with veterans, as well as prodigious research in military archives on both sides of the Atlantic. He provides a comprehensive history of the invasion which also eloquently testifies as to how common soldiers performed extraordinary feats. A major theme of the book is how the soldiers from the democratic Allied nations rose to the occasion and outperformed German troops thought to be invincible. The many small stories that Ambrose collected from paratroopers, sailors, infantrymen, and civilians make the excitement, confusion, and sheer terror of D-day come alive on the page.