The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson
The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson
23 Rating(s)
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The Guns at Last Light
The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Author: Rick Atkinson

Narrator: Rick Atkinson

Abridged: 11 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/14/2013


Synopsis

The eagerly awaited final volume in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Atkinson's New York Times bestselling Liberation Trilogy.

It is the twentieth century’s unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted the history of how the American-led coalition fought its way from North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he tells the most ?dramatic story of all—the titanic battle in Western Europe.

D-Day marked the commencement of the war’s final campaign, and Atkinson’s astonishingly fresh account of that enormous gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich—all these historic moments come utterly alive. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at all levels, from presidents and prime?ministers to ambitious generals, from war-weary lieutenants to terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the awe-inspiring effort that led to Germany’s?surrender.

With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Rick Atkinson’s remarkable accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that restored freedom to the West. His lively, occasionally lyric prose brings the vast theater of battle, from the beaches of Normandy deep into Germany, brilliantly alive. It is hard to imagine a better history of the western front’s final phase.

About Rick Atkinson

Rick Atkinson was a staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post for twenty years. He is the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy, which includes An Army at DawnThe Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light, as well as The British Are ComingThe Long Gray LineIn the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade. His many awards include Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on November 20, 2019

An exceptional end to The Liberations Trilogy, The Guns at Last Light covers the Allied advance from OVERLORD on the Normandy beaches to the surrender on May 7 in Denmark and May 8 in Berlin. As usual, Atkinson's text is dense, but full of the human stories of atrocity in warfare and elated feelings......more

Before giving this review over to why this is a very worthy addition the many shelves of World War II military histories, let us try to understand what this book is not. Rick Atkinson's The Guns at Last Light is not a comprehensive , critical analysis of the last 340 days of the War in Europe. It is,......more

Goodreads review by Rick on December 20, 2013

Funny thing about Atkinson's writing. Even after reading two extremely long volumes in his Liberation trilogy, I was compelled to jump straight into the third and final book as if I was desperate to find out the ending of the series. Of course I knew the ending. The Nazis lose. Hooray! The Guns at......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on May 08, 2013

A few years ago I picked up An Army at Dawn and was blown away. Mr. Atkinson opened an arena in history that had rarely been touched by historians, America's entry into WWII on the European theater. What blew me away the most was his ability to tell the bigger picture and include the smaller picture......more

Goodreads review by Whitley on August 21, 2013

I have just finished this extraordinary book. I read a lot of history, and have read most of the large-scale histories of World War II, including Rick Atkinson's two previous volumes, both of which were very skilled indeed. If anything, the Guns at Last light goes even deeper, drawing the reader int......more