A gift. Can’t do a gift card-taking the gift to him and thence vacation.
He’s read the Atkinson trilogy. Special interests in aircraft, D-day and paratroopers.
Thanks
There’s Donald Burgett’s Currahee about the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment
Well, if he hasn’t read Band of Brothers that seems like an easy pick.
Here’s a pair of books by Ben Macintyre dealing with the run-up to D-Day:
*Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies *by Ben Macintyre 2012
Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre 2010
These are pretty good and really help show just how involved the intelligence game can be.
Macintyre also wrote Agent Zigzag which is related to the above but I have not read it.
I’d assume he’s read “Band of Brothers” by Stephen Ambrose? It’s an entertaining read, if a bit embellished in parts.
“Masters of the Air” might be a good one- it’s being developed into an HBO miniseries along the lines of “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
I would recommend these books by famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle:
Here Is Your War: Story of G.I. Joe
Brave Men
Last Chapter
And also this collection of Ernie’s wartime dispatches from the field, edited by David Nichols and Studs Terkel-Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches
A Bridge Too Far - Cornelius Ryan’s rather epic account of General Montgomery’s plan and attack through the northern countries that ultimately failed. IIRC, a bigger parachute assault than D-day.
Overlord – Max Hastings’s account of the D-Day planning and assault. IMO a much needed breath of fresh air (for me) after reading way too much of Steven Ambrose’s relentless cheerleading for all things American in the war.
Thanks for the reminder about Studs Terkel, who also wrote maybe my all time favorite book on the war – The Good War. It’s not about combat, battles or strategies, it’s about the life experiences of the people who lived through the war, many who were on the so called home front. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Thanks, I know he’s not an Ambrose fan at all, and has read Band of Brothers. Currahee looks like it might fit the bill. I’ll check out Masters of the Air.
I am not hugely into WWII books, have only read a handful but one that grabbed me was
Max Hastings’ Armageddon: The Battle For Germany '44-'45.
John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy.
If he’d like a book about Rangers in the Pacific theater, Ghost Soldiers was pretty good.
Too late to add: the slightly later Los Banos raid was actually carried out by airborne forces. There are several books on the topic showing on Amazon, but I have not read any of them.