D-Day

May 19, 2014
Mayo (The JFK Assassination) delivers an accessible, fast-paced, first person view of D-Day and the events immediately preceding the Allied landing. The book covers, in five- to 15-minute increments, the 48 hours ending at midnight June 6, 1944. Mayo uses diaries, journals, letters, oral histories, and other primary sources to take the reader from Winston Churchill strategizing over his dinner to the violent and bloody fighting on the beaches. His balanced perspective gives voice to both Allies and Axis, including many of the smaller contingents such as the Free French Forces. Though the experienced military history reader will be familiar with many of the stories Mayo relates, there are new insights and anecdotes that will capture their attention, for example the role that British midget submarines played in the landings. Mayo's clear descriptions and engaging storytelling work as a great introduction to the battle as it unfolds.

May 1, 2014
An engrossing work that cuts and pastes chaotic events for order and sense in a manner very much like fiction.Mayo, who previously tackled The Assassination of JFK: Minute by Minute, has found through the use of montage an effective way to tell the history of these momentous events fed by thousands of smaller stories that make up the whole. Indeed, there are so many parts to the Allied invasion that the only way to tell it comprehensively is by picking and choosing and editing in the present tense, from the actions of the humble American GI, quaking with fear at the tumult coming, to the inner workings of the Map Room of Southwick House, London, where Cmdr. Dwight Eisenhower nervously awaited the weather report for June 6. All the world knew the invasion was coming, even the Germans, but the exact moment was an amazingly well-kept secret. Even when the action started, with the BBC's reading of a Verlaine poem that acted as a coded message to the French Resistance, German intelligence and field marshals Gerd von Rundstedt and Erwin Rommel, lulled by the bad weather and the effectiveness of the deceptive Allied Operation Fortitude, did not believe it was the real thing. Gradually, Mayo puts the pieces together, chronologically, aided by different fonts and typefaces, from extracts of conversations and diaries-e.g., that of Joseph Goebbels, commenting on the Fuhrer's good mood, and Anne Frank, whose attic-bound family eagerly anticipated the invasion-to the troops' horrifically nauseous crossing of the English Channel, the enormous strains on airborne and infantry divisions under fire on Omaha Beach, and the work of Life photographer Robert Capa.An accessible history that conveys the havoc and vast international spread of D-Day.

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