combines an impressive depth of research with a knack for taut, compelling narrative.” - Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. “ fascinating account of the war in Sicily and Italy.” - USA Today

Anyone who devoured An Army at Dawn with relish will be delighted with Atkinson's account of the Sicilian and Italian campaign.” - The New York Times Book Review “Monumental … With this book, Rick Atkinson cements his place among America's great popular historians, in the tradition of Bruce Catton and Stephen Ambrose.” - The Washington Post Atkinson, a longtime correspondent and editor for The Washington Post, conveys all of this with sharp-edged immediacy and a keen eye for the monstrous and the absurd.” - William Grimes, The New York Times He excels at describing the furor of battle, and the Italian campaign provides him with abundant raw material. A planned third volume, on the Normandy invasion and the war in Europe, will complete The Liberation Trilogy, which is shaping up as a triumph of narrative history, elegantly written, thick with unforgettable description and rooted in the sights and sounds of battle. “In The Day of Battle, Rick Atkinson picks up where he left off in An Army at Dawn, his history of the North African campaign, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. “A triumph of narrative history, elegantly written, thick with unforgettable description and rooted in the sights and sounds of battle.” - The New York Times Atkinson's achievement is to marry prodigious research with a superbly organized narrative and then to overlay the whole with writing as powerful and elegant as any great narrative of war.” - The Wall Street Journal

And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.ĭrawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, The Day of Battle is a masterly account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, the Rapido River, and Monte Cassino were particularly lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. The decision to invade the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was controversial, but once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome. In An Army at Dawn-winner of the Pulitzer Prize-Rick Atkinson provided an authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa during World War II. In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy

The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson