An Army at Dawn : The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.

Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.

Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

“As masterfully executed as it was conceived.” —Nicholas Proffit, The Philadelphia Inquirer (front page) on The Long Gray Line

“A story of epic proportions . . . An awesome feat of biographical reconstruction.” —Cullen Murphey, The Boston Globeon The Long Gray Line

“Enormously rich in detail and written with a novelist's brilliance, the pages literally hurry before one . . . A very moving book.” —James Salter, The Washington Post Book World on The Long Gray Line