More D-Day books

Reading D-Day

One of the questions that I wasn't asked for the History Channel documentary, and that surely would have taken hours and hours to answer, is probably the most basic:

What's a good book to read if you're interested in D-Day?

Stephen Ambrose's D-Day is usually mentioned as one of the best introductions for a general reader, and I still remember my first reading when I was . . . a few years younger than I am today. Anthony Beevor's one volume D-Day is another good survey of the battle - and I'm not just saying that because he's in the History Channel documentary, too. (You should see my dog-eared copy, still tagged with a mountain of Post-It notes.) Max Hastings' Overlord is another good introduction, a bit older than the others, but still an excellent read.

After a general introduction, you might want to dig in a little deeper with Carlo d'Este's Decision in Normandy and John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy. Both books take you well beyond D-Day, and in fact past Cobra, the battle that broke the american army out and set the stage for the race across France. Speaking of Cobra, James Jay Carafano's After D-Day is the best one-volume account of the battle I've found.

There are literally thousands of other books to round out the picture. You won't agree with every interpretation, not even (or especially not) in the best-known books, but that's part of the fun of history.