Popular World War II history, perhaps more popular than necessary.
Another history of the liberation of Paris.
Paris was taken by the Wehrmacht in 1940 and then taken back in 1944. Military historians have covered this ground in countless books, and this one is a middling entry in the genre. Best known as the co-author of the bestselling Killing series with Bill O’Reilly, journalist Dugard—who has also authored books on Christopher Columbus, Capt. James Cook, and others—delivers another breathless historical narrative that will find a receptive audience among fans of Dugard and the O’Reilly series. Despite the book’s title, there was no epic battle for Paris. In 1940, the French declared it an open city, so the Wehrmacht moved in without a fight and withdrew, four years later, without defending it. Dugard opens with the German invasion on May 10, 1940, which ended in the French surrender. Then he delivers a vivid yet scattershot history of the war in Europe (the Russian front receives a rare mention), with a heavy emphasis on France and ending with 20 pages recounting the liberation of Paris on Aug. 25, 1944. Appropriately, the author gives Charles de Gaulle a major role and devotes several chapters to the little-known Battle of Bir Hakeim, the valiant defense of a North African desert outpost by Free French troops in 1942. Writing for a broad audience, Dugard inevitably devotes far too much space to the French Resistance, the heroics of suffering of which were not matched by their contributions to victory. As a more “in-depth” work, Dugard recommends the modestly deep 1965 bestseller Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. Far better are Lloyd Clark’s Blitzkrieg (2016), which focuses on the 1940 French defeat, and Jean Edward Smith’s The Liberation of Paris (2019), an instructive look at the political calculations of the Allies.
Popular World War II history, perhaps more popular than necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18308-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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