Army At Dawn

"An Army at Dawn" by Rick Atkinson, published by Abacus. In An Army at Dawn, a comprehensive look at the 1942-1943 Allied invasion of North Africa, author Rick Atkinson posits that the campaign was, along with the battles of Stalingrad and Midway, where the ''Axis ... forever lost the initiative'' and the ''fable of 3rd Reich invincibility was dissolved.'' Additionally, it forestalled a premature and potentially disastrous cross-channel invasion of France and served as a grueling ''testing ground'' for an as-yet inexperienced American army. Lastly, by relegating Great Britain to what Atkinson calls the status of ''junior partner'' in the war effort, North Africa marked the beginning of American geopolitical hegemony. Although his prose is occasionally overwrought, Atkinson's account is a superior one, an agile, well-informed mix of informed strategic overview and intimate battlefield-and-barracks anecdotes. (Tobacco-starved soldiers took to smoking cigarettes made of toilet paper and eucalyptus leaves.) Especially interesting are Atkinson's straightforward accounts of the many ''feuds, tiffs and spats'' among British and American commanders, politicians, and strategists and his honest assessments of their--and their soldiers'--performance and behavior, for better and for worse. This is an engrossing, extremely accessible account of a grim and too-often overlooked military campaign. --H. O'BillovichFrom Publishers WeeklyAtkinson won a Pulitzer Prize during his time as a journalist and editor at the Washington Post and is the author of The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966 and of Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. In contrast to Crusade's illustrations of technomastery, this book depicts the U.S. Army's introduction to modern war. The Tunisian campaign, Atkinson shows, was undertaken by an American army lacking in training and experience alongside a British army whose primary experience had been of defeat. Green units panicked, abandoning wounded and weapons. Clashes between and w Book details: published 2002. Order now on BookShops.in with fast, reliable delivery across India.