written by on 17/06/2010
Astonishingly one sided view of D-Day. Written, I believe, with a potential Hollywood film script in mind rather than an accurate historical account.
Ambrose claims interviews with hundreds of veterans - 99% of whom seem to have been American (with a few Canadian - seems he didn't travel outside of North America for his interviews), with the usual ridiculous stereotypes of their allies (stopping to brew tea etc...) Perhaps it might have helped to use the accounts of at least one or two British and German veterans who have a slightly different view to Ambrose on the relative fighting merits of their adversaries.
Ambrose needs to decide whether he is an historian, or fiction writer - this work follows his similarly biased Band of Brothers and seems to follow a pattern of modern day American films and books rewriting history, claiming British heroics as their own and portraying the Second World War as an exclusively US achievement.
Excellent read if you are American looking for an uplifting work of fiction, not an accurate account and very poorly researched.