Friday, April 7, 2017

Rick Atkinson

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize in History. Winner of the George Polk Award, the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award. A former staff writer and senior editor at the Washington Post , Rick Atkinson is one of the most comprehensive researchers who also has some of the most eminently readable prose in the field of military history.

His 'Liberation Trilogy', composed of An Army At Dawn, The Guns at Last Light and The Day of Battle is a triumph of narrative history which chronicles the entirety of US military involvement in its campaigns in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and the Western Front in WWII.

Skillfully illustrating the campaigns from the command structure and logistical challenges all the way down to what life was like for the individuals participating, he excels at describing the horror and chaos of battle while pointing out both the absurd and the momentous.

When there are popular historians like Rick Atkinson, along with other luminaries such as Stephen Ambrose and Bruce Catton, it is sad that only right wing pundits co-authoring' similarly prefixed (Killing...) annotated and sensationalized accounts of important world history are in the top ten best sellers list.

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