An Army at Dawn: the War in North Africa, 1942-1943

AN ARMY AT DAWN: THE WAR IN NORTH AFRICA, 1942-1943; Rick Atkinson; New York: Henry Holt, 2002, 541 pp. Non-fiction

An Army at Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for 2002 and rightly so. I have read many good non-fiction books this year, but this one is the best, second only to Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August among my favorite history books. Atkinson's subject is the entry of the United States into World War II, beginning with the campaign in Northern Africa designed to root out the Germans and Italians to clear the way for a strike across the Mediterranean into Italy and then northward to retake Europe.The writing is splendid, the detail of conversations, letters home from soldiers, what Eisenhower was wishing (to get in his bunk and read a Western), and what Roosevelt and Churchill were saying to each other is no less than extraordinary. This is a sad book, of course, as all books about wars must be, but so well done--enlightening, poignant, revealing.

LW