Decision in Normandy

New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1994. Reprint Edition. Presumed first printing thus. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Tom Stalker (Maps). 555, [9] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Appendices. Sources. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Carlo D'Este (1936 - November 22, 2020) was an American military historian and biographer, author of several books, especially on World War II. He was a decorated U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. In 2011, he was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. D'Este attended New Mexico Military Institute junior college in 1956. He received his B.A. (magna cum laude) from Norwich University in 1958, an M.A. from the University of Richmond in 1974, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Norwich in 1992. He received his master's from University of Richmond in 1974 and then attended University of London under the G.I. bill. On his retirement from the army in 1978 he took to writing military history, for which he won many prizes and achieved international recognition in the U.S. and Britain - beginning with Decision in Normandy, his revisionist history of the D-Day landings and Allied campaign in France in 1944. D'Este was not only featured in multiple television documentaries, but was asked to advise President Clinton at the White House before the president's fiftieth anniversary visit to Normandy and Italy, in 1994. The battle for Normandy was the most complex and daring military operation in the history of modern warfare. Two years of intense, detailed planning reached its successful conclusion when the Allied forces took the beaches on D-Day. But the seventy-six-day campaign that followed, the Allies' crucial bid for a toehold in western Europe, was one of the bloodiest of the war, and its true story has been concealed in myth. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished papers, declassified documents, diaries, and personal interviews, Carlo D'Este has written the first full account of what actually happened in Normandy, how the campaign went wrong, and how it was eventually won. Step-by-step the reader is taken through the Normandy campaign from the earliest days after Dunkirk when Churchill first considered the idea of a cross-channel invasion of France, to the key battles that determined that outcome, with maps clearly explaining the strategy and logistics of each battle.