THE LONGEST DAY (Cornelius Ryan)

The late Cornelius Ryan's account of the first 24 hours of D-Day, the Allied invasion of the Normandy Coast on June 5-6, 1944. The great strength of the book is its placing the reader in the midst of the unfolding battle and on fighting forces themselves on both sides. He accomplishes this through the use of direct action-oriented prose, vivid imagery of the sounds and confusion of battle and numerous personal interest vignettes. The account of the fighting itself is superb, however the author engages in comparatively brief and superficial discussion of strategy and plans. His narrative unfolds as the battle itself does, slowly, in irregular bursts of activity and gradually builds to a crescendo as the intensity and scale of the fighting increases.

Craig says the first part of the book "deals with the preparations for the battle, the fears and false alarms . . . and the delicate problems involved in choosing the time for launching the operat

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D- JUNE 6, 1944 Introduction This research .... Overlord. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959. Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms. .... (4073 16 )

Hannibal's & the Gauls .... theater passed under the command of Publius Cornelius Scipio the .... cold and also from hunger, as the .... was now .... front lines, men who had been longest in action .... (7749 31 )

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