Robert Killebrew
With this book, Rick Atkinson cements his place among America's great popular historians, in the tradition of Bruce Catton and Stephen Ambrose. Though The Day of Battle's tone is appropriately somber—the story of civilian deaths in Italy from allied bombing and German executions is especially sickening—its underlying theme is optimistic, even triumphal. Atkinson skillfully conveys the growing power of the U.S. Army, pouring men and materiel forward in an inexhaustible stream and, at the front, the toughening of American troops as they advance and beat hell out of an expert and implacable enemy. This is gritty history…a fitting testament to the GIs of the Fifth Army and the Italian campaign.