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 enlarge | Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
Buy New: $8.39
You Save: $8.61 (51%)
New (7) Used (13) from $4.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  307 reviews
Sales Rank: 310564
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.542142
ASIN: B0013L2EG8
Publication Date: June 1, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Unvarnished Truth! August 25, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
`D-Day' by Stephen Ambrose was an excellent book about the greatest battle of the 20th century. It was frank, candid, brutal, engaging, scary, exhilarating, massive, loud, and, I'm sure many other things. It was based on unvarnished first-hand accounts from the wounded at Normandy (compiled for the Eisenhower Center).You get the story about what really went on from the guys that were there, as well as candid insights and quotes from the high military leadership, from both the Allied and Axis perspectives. It was nothing short of a phenomenal effort of scholarship, a bird's eye view along with numerous front-line views.
I have been interested in D-Day since I first saw the movie `The Longest Day' with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. I still really like the movie and catch a little of it almost every year around the anniversary date. I also liked `Saving Private Ryan', which was a much more realistic (though harder-to-watch) version of the battle, with unforgettable beach scenes of the action. And recently, a full 20 years after his death, I even found out that my father had participated in D-Day. It was strange: he never said a word about it. My sister ordered his discharge papers on a genealogical search and that's how we found out! He was a `radio mechanic' in the Air Corps, by the way.
I would have liked to have been anywhere but there on that day, but I would have wanted to do my duty as most of the men there did. The battle plans went right out the window due to weather, inaccurate troop and materiel landings, inaccurate paratrooper drops, and a failure to take into account the omnipresent hedgerows (of all things). The incoming troops were sitting ducks that were not battle tested (some high school age) and were going against (supposedly) the best military on the planet. The courage and the carnage were at times unbelievable. The accounts of the beach action were every bit as brutal, and maybe more so, than the Private Ryan movie. Even the Allied medics treating the wounded were fair game as target practice for the Axis.. Also, in one account, an Allied landing craft leader ordered land craft off in water that was clearly too deep so he could get out of there. (I'm glad to report that his orders were disobeyed and he was eventually mustered out with a dishonorable discharge.)
The battle was won by the Allies by their innovative, creative leadership, and lost by the Axis by the rigid, moribund, top-down leadership. The Allies on the front lines simply had to regroup and improvise in real time to get to get it done while the Axis solders had to wait for decisions often from those not even on the scene, which is some cases meant Hitler himself. The scene in `The Longest Day' was correct: Hitler's need for sleep trumped the Axis need for a tank counter attack. Rommel was ham-strung because he didn't have control of the tanks, but it also must be said, he wasn't very good at defensive warfare either.
I learned some new things about the battle. For example, the attack was a major gamble for the Allies, leaving England exposed. There was no fall-back plan and the Allies were very susceptible to a counter-attack. The battle itself was extraordinarily massive and loud; over and over again that point is made in the first hand accounts. Also, there were years of planning and training right down to the level of each soldier or sailor. In the movies, it seemed that they just showed up and went at it.
I would highly recommend it for anyone with any interest in American history. It's very detailed but well-worth the read, even for a semi-buff of American military history such as myself.
Tide Of Fire And Blood June 9, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Stephen Ambrose was an opinionated, myopic self-aggrandizer who could spin a great tale and give unique perspective to the most batted-around topic. Both the bad and good sides of Ambrose are on display in his 1994 book "D-Day", published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
Reading the reviews here is like reading Ambrose himself. The bullets fly thick and fast, and sober-sided analysis gives way to nationalistic ranting. It's not that people are wrong when they say "D-Day" shortchanges the non-American story behind the Normandy landings. Actually, it is a significant failing. But the drama of D-Day itself centered on one beachhead, the Omaha beachhead attacked by the Americans, and in the airborne landings carried out by two American and one British paratroop division (a Canadian airborne brigade also pitched in). "D-Day" is not definitive, no, but by focusing on the drama it is a hell of a read.
He writes: "It was a cool night and the spray hitting the men in the face was cold, but the soldiers and sailors gathered off the Normandy coast were sweating."
So are you, especially as Ambrose makes use of numerous oral histories and interviews to give an immersive view of how D-Day went down. This is especially poignant and valuable when it comes to the attack on Omaha Beach, which Ambrose describes at great length and heartbreaking detail. For the 116th and 16th regiments, first in, the battle was akin to the Charge of the Light Brigade under the enfilading fire of German MG-42s and artillery. Companies were wiped out before firing back. The greatest contribution many would make that day would be to carry in weapons others stripped from their corpses.
Ambrose tells the story well, but can't resist making his points in neon for the sleepy reader. Telling you "someone" had to be doing something right at Omaha through all the carnage, he goes on to say: "That someone was spelled i-n-f-a-n-t-r-y."
That is not scholarship but shilling, and there is too much of it in this book. Add to that the lack of focus on America's allies that day (less than 20 pages for Juno, the Canadian beach which Ambrose notes saw the highest proportion of Allied casualties on June 6, and the farthest Allied advance). Ambrose knew his market was predominately American, and catered to it unabashedly.
Yet despite these faults, the facts are undeniable, about a generation of young Americans who had the right stuff, and how much of that stuff was left wafting in the tide off the coast of France. If it's not a rounded or definitive account of D-Day (I recommend "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan), "D-Day" offers thrilling testimony to one of the great American achievements, albeit one that was part of a larger endeavor. It's like seeing those famous Robert Capa photos for the first time, without blurriness and distortion.
"Who can fail to see the beauty and sacrifice our brave lads are making?" wrote a woman to her newspaper in Bedford, Virginia just after the battle. "Because they cannot keep themselves for a day, we'll keep them forever in memory and give them immortality." Ambrose is working along similar lines, and it's hard to begrudge him his success.
 Patronising and condescending - US centric account April 17, 2007
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I finished Mr Ambrose's book after starting it a year ago. I felt compelled to put it down eight times during those 12 months because of the patronising and condescending manner in which he formulated and presented his view on everyone BUT the American forces leading up to; on and post D-Day. I had hoped to present this book to my father, a former Desert Rat but felt that he would probably rage and rail against the author to the extent that he would probably 'hop his twig'.
If you wish to read this book then I would recommend it, with one proviso; read it for the anecdotal accounts of the men who were there and NOT Mr Ambrose's interpretation of how he crafted his language to pour scorn and derision on the Canadians, French and British. For he brings nothing new to light on Operation Overlord but yet has done a splendid job on including accounts of US servicemen and the tasks that were set before them.
While the publisher's have dutifully titled it "D-Day - June 6, 1944: the Climatic battle of World War II", I believe it should be fairly entitled, "D-Day: anecdotes from the US Armed Forces". That way, the publishers can solve a riddle of putting in 3 chapters out of 32 (or 45 pages of a total of 576) for the 'rest' of the nations that bravely gave their men and women to this operation.
I would give this book to my local library so they can place it next to "Saving Private Ryan" and "U-571" where America wins the war, again, again, again.
Simon and Schuster should do THEIR homework better in the future.
 Disappointing, and big time. March 21, 2007
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
The positive: The first hand accounts of soldiers fighting there.
The bad: Almost anything else, both the editing and him interjecting his own unfounded opinion, often based on nothing more then ideological opinion. Even the title is highly misleading.
I bought this book, knowing Ambrose's books about Eisenhower, and wanting to read something during a three day train-ride form San Fransisco to Chicago. I was really disappointed.
I found the book to be highly biased, and, short of the anecdotes by those involved, worthless as a serious history book. The only good soldier it seems was the American soldier, the Germans are portrayed as vastly inferior (unless complimenting them makes the Americans look better), and the other Allies are only slightly better than the Germans. It made me wonder for what reason then (if Ambrose's opinion would be true) it took the Americans so long to break out, or why they had such a hard time before (Kasserine, Anzio, Cassino) and after (Ardennes ie), with the majority of the German forces (both quantity and quality) fighting the Soviets.
Apart from ideological opinion (fighters for democracy always fight better), he presents no solid proof to support many of his notions about American (or to a lesser degree allied superiority) apart from the very obvious (more men, airplanes, ships and tanks), even though his opinion is contrary to most evidence there is (statistics, battlefield accounts etc. etc). In fact, to a degree it even seems to contradict basic American military doctrine, which focuses on the use of overwhelming firepower (air and artillery) rather then training and quality of the individual soldier.
Further, the book is seemingly devoted, when the troops finally land, to the landings on Omaha, with a little attention for Utah and virtually none for the others. Which makes the title (and the reviews on the back) highly misleading. Apart from the fact that battles like the Battle of Britian, El Alamein, Stalingrad, Kursk and most likely even Bagration would rank above D-Day as far as climactic battles go for WW II (for post WW II is another thing) even if for many men storming the beaches it was the climax after a long wait.
Writing and editing: IMHO an atrocious job was done by the editor. Ambrose repeats himself regularly, sometimes seemingly copying sections he wrote just a few pages earlier. It becomes really annoying, and distracting. And therefor it takes away from the stories from those who fought there.
In the end, I found it more interesting to watch the Nevada desert or the Great Plains between Lincoln, Nebraska, and Chicago then read another page. And I doubt I will ever find the desire to finish it.
great condition March 8, 2007
0 out of 8 found this review helpful
It took a long time to receive the merchandise. I just received the book yesterday and I ordered it 6 weeks ago.
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