I got interested in the Normandy landings during our recent trip 
when we spent a day going to the various landing beaches. As I will do, I started reading everything I could find on the subject, starting with a book on the landing beaches themselves (right) that I bought in Arromanche at our first stop. A few days later I saw this at HP Books in Dallas and got it, as well as the audiobook since I was going to be on the road a lot.
Unfortunately, the structure of the book means that the landings and the run-up to 
the landings themselves is largely offstage. The American activity is largely limited to the Band of Brothers paratroopers story, not the assault at Omaha and Utah. And while the other five armies aren't rigorously segregated in their treatment, that's probably helpful because the book ends up telling a coherent overall story that's roughly chronological. Keegan just can't write a bad story, and even the most tedious narration and attention to detail never stops you from being interested in the story. As an example, I remember navigating around an unknown section of Dallas looking for a specific diner, and I keep rewinding the book because I was missing an interesting account of the minutiae of the loyalty or lack thereof of various eastern European nation to Hitler's Germany. Now that's when you know someone can tell a story.
This still isn't the best overall book on Normandy – and doesn't pretend to be – but it's never a bad investment of time to read something by John Keegan.
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