This coming Thursday, June 6, marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when U.S., British and Canadian forces landed in Nazi-occupied France. In the run-up to this milestone, Shelf Awareness has been periodically highlighting some of the best books about D-Day. This is the last in the series.
British military historian Antony Beevor is best known for his two books about the Eastern Front of World War II: Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 (1998) and The Fall of Berlin 1945 (2002). Aside from these mega-bestselling titles, Beevor has covered most every aspect of the conflict, from the invasion of Crete (Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, 1991) and the Battle of the Bulge (Ardennes 1944, 2015) to a compendium of the entire war (The Second World War, 2012). His most recent work is The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II (2018). All of Beevor's books move deftly between large scale operational history and the experiences of individual soldiers. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (2009) opens the night before the invasion and ends with the liberation of Paris. It tracks American, British, Canadian and German soldiers in command and combat roles while also documenting the terrible cost to French civilians caught in the fighting. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy was last published in 2010 by Penguin Books ($22, 9780143118183). --Tobias Mutter
