The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 [Paperback]

ANew York TimesBestseller

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

InAn Army at Dawnwinner of the Pulitzer PrizeRick Atkinson provided an authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa during World War II. Now, inThe 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.

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. 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. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.

Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair,The Day of Battleis a masterly account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns.

Rick Atkinson,recipient of the 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, is the bestselling author ofAn Army at Dawn, The Long Gray Line, andIn the Company of Soldiers. He was a staff writer and senior editor atThe Washington Postfor twenty years, and his many awards include Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Majestic... 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

A triumph of narrative history, elegantly wl³n