I've been researching for about 10 months now with a long way to go. I'm actually doing a trilogy on that, not because I'm fixated on trilogies but that's because the way the story seems to break narratively. But yeah, there is a sense of gratification that I fulfilled what I set out to do 15 years ago.

I'm deep into another project so I can't say there's a lot of rest for the weary. Our conversation is edited for brevity and clarity.Ĭongratulations on finishing up World War II. He recently visited Portland to promote the paperback edition of 'The Guns at Last Light' and revealed that he's deep into another trilogy, on the American Revolution. The Liberation Trilogy started with 'An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-43,' continued with 'The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-44' and concluded with 'The Guns at Last Light: The War in Europe, 1944-45.'Ītkinson has written three other books and won three Pulitzer Prizes, one for 'An Army at Dawn' and two for work at the Post. Army officer and a 25-year veteran at The Washington Post, recently completed a three-volume history of World War II in Europe.

With The Day of Battle, Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns.Rick Atkinson, the son of U.S. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.ĭrawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war's most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula.

But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. Now, in The 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. In An Army at Dawn -winner of the Pulitzer Prize-Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. 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

The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson