The Long Gray Line, Rick Atkinson
The Long Gray Line, Rick Atkinson
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The Long Gray Line
The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966

Author: Rick Atkinson

Narrator: Adam Barr, Rick Atkinson

Unabridged: 28 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/04/2021

Synopsis

"A story of epic proportions [and] an awesome feat of biographical reconstruction."—The Boston Globe

**This program includes an original foreword, read by Rick Atkinson, and exclusive to the audiobook, as well as a bonus conversation between the author and Ty Seidule**

For more on Rick Atkinson's research and writing, please visit revolutiontrilogy.com

A classic of its kind, The Long Gray Line is the twenty-five-year saga of the West Point class of 1966. With a novelist's eye for detail, Rick Atkinson illuminates this powerful story through the lives of three classmates and the women they loved—from the boisterous cadet years, to the fires of Vietnam, to the hard peace and internal struggles that followed the war.

The rich cast of characters also includes Douglas MacArthur, William C. Westmoreland, and a score of other memorable figures. The class of 1966 straddled a fault line in American history, and Atkinson's masterly book speaks for a generation of American men and women about innocence, patriotism, and the price we pay for our dreams.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

About Rick Atkinson

Rick Atkinson is the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy—An Army at Dawn (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History), The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light—as well as The Long Gray Line and other books. His many additional awards include a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, a George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award. A former staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Eric_W on November 19, 2008

One of the hazards of being Santa Claus in a library is that one sees all sorts of interesting items in between promises for Barbie dolls and AK-47s. I happened to run across Rick Atkinson's Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966 in the Forreston Public Library. This is......more

Goodreads review by Dax on March 17, 2025

At this point I expect nothing less than excellence from Atkinson. I loved his WW2 trilogy and am excited to get to his Revolutionary War trilogy which is in process. 'The Long Gray Line' was, I believe, his first foray into book publishing and was published in the late 80's. Atkinson tracks the exp......more

Goodreads review by William on August 01, 2012

My brother is a great reader of books on military history. When he finds one he really likes, he tries to get me to read it. I usually defer, but sometimes, if I'm searching for something to red, I'll relent. The Long Gray Line is a case in point. It is about the West Point class of 1966, which had......more

Goodreads review by Larry on January 05, 2013

This is a story of the United States Military Academy at West Point class of 1966, a class that graduated into the war in Vietnam. It is non-fiction, about real people and real events. We are introduced to several cadets and follow them and their cohort through twenty-five years. Women were first ad......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer (JC-S) on June 01, 2022

From West Point to Vietnam This book has sat on my bookshelf, unread, for a very long time. But once I picked it up, I found it very difficult to put it down. The West Point Class of 1966 entered the academy in 1962. Mr Atkinson’s book follows the lives of several members of the Class of 1966. Many o......more

Quotes

“Enormously rich in detail and written with a novelist's brilliance… A very moving book.” —James Salter, The Washington Post Book World

“A story of epic proportions [and] awesome feat of biographical reconstruction… A difficult book to put down.” —Cullen Murphy, The Boston Globe

“The Long Gray Line is a profoundly moving saga in which the U.S. Military Academy at West Point stands center stage. In mufti or olive drab, at peace or war, amidst joy or grief, in life or death, the academy shapes all. The author has captured its ethos. If you want to see a slice of the nation's manhood in a drama of troubled times and find its heart, feel its emotions, sense its dilemmas, then read this book. It is a stunning story.” —Colin L. Powell

“More of a biography of a generation than of a class at West Point… Stark, shocking, jolting.” —John Eisenhower, Chicago Tribune (front page review)

“Journalism elevated to narrative history, a book like Neil Sheehan's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Bright Shining Lie. But better.” —USA Today

“A work as masterfully executed as it was conceived.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

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