I graduated from West Point in 1991, some twenty five years after the class chronicled in the book. Atkinson's description of life at the Academy is dead accurate (amazing how few changes twenty five years have delivered) and one assumes that his perceptive reporter's eye extends to the combat scenes in Vietnam. Therefore, for me this book is one of the definitive accounts of the Vietnam era. In that my generation has to rely on second-hand accounts to understand this era, The Long Gray Line is an authoritative guide.

Strongly recommended for anyone interested in West Point, the Vietnam War, or the societal upheaval which followed the war's conclusion.

Atkinson did a wonderful job with this book. Atkinson wrote about the West Point Class of 1966, following the lives of the men during their years at West Point, through Vietnam, and beyond. As he told a fascinating tale of the cultural changes in our country from the 1960's to the 1980's, he attacked a few Hollywood myths about the Vietnam experience. For one example, the army was not full of unhappy druggies at the time.

Atkinson shared anecdotes about many people, but he followed most closely the story of three. One was George Crocker, an army career man; then there was Tom Carhart, whose attitude towards the Vietnam War and the army went through peaks and valleys; and finally there was Jack Wheeler, who liked the army, but did not want to fight. To further flesh out our understanding of life in the army for the West Point graduate of 1966, Atkinson went into great detail on the lives of a couple of people who never served in the army. The two were a minister who worked at the West Point Chapel even though he was a civilian and a widow of an officer who survived Vietnam only to be killed in a border incident between North and South Korea.

The book was very well done, but it was not without flaw. Of course this problem might not have been possible to solve, given the scope of the work. As the lives of the graduates unfolded over the years, and Atkinson switched from one person's story to update another, it was sometimes hard to keep all the names straight. It was occasionally difficult to remember all the back story of someone and fit the new developments within the appropriate context. Again, this probably could not have been helped, since Atkinson wanted to cast his net as wide as possible to show us what life was really like for these people. He obviously could not narrow his focus without losing a part of the big picture.

This book was great for pleasure reading, but it was informative enough to serve as a wonderful resource for students of military history, Vietnam, and/or life in AMerica in the 1960's and 1970's.

A different look at Army veterans that went to Vietnam... If this book doesn't just move you to tears at points, you aren't human... His look at first-year cadet life at West Point is interesting and should be familiar to anyone who has done a turn at a military academy... Still, it should be read by people to give them a look at what Vietnam vets did both before and after the war...

This was one of the first detailed books out about the Gulf War, and one I read exhaustively when it first came out, having participated as a member of the 24th Infantry Division. It is well written, suspensful, but in most cases focuses only on the "official" story as it was told by the Pentagon.

It's difficult to write history so quickly after it happens -- for example, Atkinson barely covers the post-ceasefire battle in the Rumayla Oilfield, a very large engagement which took place after the ceasefire -- and after all the reporters had returned to Riyadh.

On the whole, very solid and will give a good view of the war. Supplement by reading Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article from May 2000 to get a feel for what it was like on the ground. As a veteran, and the author of an upcoming novel about the war (Prayer at Rumayla: A Novel of the Gulf War), this is a book I would recommend.

I ordered this book shortly after the 9/11 attack, anticipating another land battle in the Middle East. I wanted to know what to expect if our forces were moved in in any great numbers. Crusade provided exactly that information by providing me with a clear documentation of the Gulf War. Despite the differences between the two wars, I still found the book helpful. Rick Atkinson's style is a lot like Sebastian Junger's (The Perfect Storm). It's almost like reading a very long newspaper article, except that Atkinson keeps it interesting.

My only complaint is that he relies too heavily on what appears to be a list of crutch words. These should fairly pop out at you, but they do not really take away from the quality of his writing. Unless of course, you are looking for creative merit.

Creativity is not a part of the book. It is a complete record of the facts, as well as Atkinson's opinion's as they relate.

I give this book full marks.

Crusade is a readable, riveting narrative of the events of the Persian Gulf War. It it one of the few texts on the subject which doesn't appear to have any other agenda than the truth. Political analysis, technical detail and first person accounts are woven together to enlighten and educate the reader. As a counterpoint, the book does suffer from its closeness to the event as time has revealed new facts and insights about the war

This book will be the definitive work, from the American point of view, on the war in North Africa, covering the period when the United States got involved (November 1942) up until the German surrender in Tunisia (May 1943). Mr. Atkinson effectively sets the stage by showing the sorry state the U.S. military had fallen into prior to the decision to invade North Africa. He points out that in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the U.S. Army had ranked seventeenth in the world in size and combat power, just behind Romania. When 136 German divisions conquered Western Europe in the Spring of 1940, our War Department reported that we could only field five divisions! Mr. Atkinson writes, "Equipment and weaponry were pathetic. Soldiers trained with drainpipes for antitank guns, stovepipes for mortar tubes, and brooms for rifles...Only six medium tanks had been built in 1939.....This in part reflected an enduring loyalty to the horse...The Army's cavalry chief assured Congress in 1941 that four well-spaced horsemen could charge half a mile across an open field to destroy an enemy machine-gun nest without sustaining a scratch." This sort of information helps you to appreciate what had to be overcome in order for us to play our part in the expulsion of the Axis forces from North Africa! Mr. Atkinson doesn't fail to show us what other problems had to be overcome...Eisenhower having to learn "on the job" how to be Supreme Commander; having to build and then hold together the Allied coalition...this was very difficult, as many top men in the British military had nothing but disdain for Eisenhower's abilities and also for the abilities of the American troops (and many of the top American brass, such as Eisenower, Bradley and Patton were Anglophobic, so it worked both ways!); the administrative and logistical nightmares....the actual amphibious landings, getting supplies to the troops, coordinating the actions of the British and American forces, etc.; plus the number one problem of building an effective fighting force, made up of officers who hadn't been in battle since WWI (and that was a type of battle that had little relevance in the current situation!) and green troops that had never experienced combat. So, as Mr. Atkinson states, North Africa was the place where U.S. forces (and their superiors) learned to integrate and coordinate their actions both with themselves and with their Allies; and on a more basic level, where we learned how to hate and kill the enemy. North Africa prepared us for what we had to do later on in Italy and, of course, after June 6th, 1944. Mr. Atkinson is very evenhanded in his account. He doesn't hesitate to point out the mistakes made by both the British and the Americans. Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Alexander, etc. all come in for their share of criticism as well as being praised, when praise it due. One thing that really surprised me was the sheer level of backbiting that went on...the nasty comments made by the British about the Americans, and vice-versa. The author is also very good at pointing out the numerous strategic and tactical errors made on the various battlefields. Mistakes were made by not only the top brass, but also by people in charge at lower levels. Very basic errors were made....such as not sending out reconnaisance units, initiating tank attacks without proper artillery or air support, etc. Many brave men were sent to their deaths in useless and ill-conceived actions. Sometimes just the sheer confusion of the battlefield was responsible, or just plain error....planes bombing their own men or artillery falling short, etc. Another area where Mr. Atkinson excels is in the "thumbnail" sketch of the numerous personalities that are integral to the story. The writing is sharp, witty and, quite often, eloquent. Here are just a few sentences concerning General Patton: "More than a quarter-century had gone by since his first intoxicating taste of battle and fame, during the Punitive Expedition to Mexico in 1916, when he had briefly become a national hero for killing three banditos and strapping their bodies to his automobile running boards like game trophies.....At the age of fifty, upon reading J.F.C. Fuller's classic 'Generalship: It's Diseases and Their Cures,' Patton had wept bitterly because eighty-nine of the one hundred great commanders profiled were younger than he. Now, when he was fifty-six, his hour had come round." Mr. Atkinson is also very good at describing the nuts and bolts of the various battles. The descriptions are clear, vivid and exciting. Some readers with a strong interest in the military aspects may be a bit disappointed in the maps. They are few and, barely, adequate. But this is a minor quibble. A more serious criticism might be that there is very little here concerning the view from the German and Italian side. But I don't think such criticism would be fair, because Mr. Atkinson's intent was never to show the war in North Africa from all points of view. He wanted to show the difficulties involved in the U.S. becoming an effective fighting force, the animosity that had to be overcome so that the Americans and British could start to form an effective alliance and, lastly, to set the stage for volume II of his "Liberation Trilogy"- the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943. He has accomplished what he set out to do, and he has done so brilliantly.

Rick Atkinson has been writing military history for about a decade now. He started with books on West Point (which covered Viet Nam rather thoroughly) and the Gulf War, and now he's turned his sights on World War II. He definitely has a modern appraisal of war: the one previous reviewer who complains about Atkinson not recounting any acts of "selfless heroism" by U.S. troops is basically correct. The difference is in focus, though, not that Atkinson doesn't want to portray American soldiers as brave. He doesn't recount any instances of selfless heroism on the part of Germans, Italians, or British soldiers either. To Atkinson, war is a nasty, merciless, vicious, bloody mess, where mistakes cost lives, and almost everyone makes these mistakes, at least starting out.

For one thing, while the book does concentrate a good deal on the front-line soldiers and their ordeals, it spends more time concentrating on the command structure of the U.S. Army, and its compatriots and opponents. While he doesn't name *every* regimental commander, he sure names a lot of them, and the division commanders in the American army at least are described in some detail. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of the first president Roosevelt and cousin of the second one, gets a wonderful portrait that makes you sympathize with him, and almost gives you the feeling you know him, though he died in 1944. The author's particular favorite among the generals (he's said this in an interview) is Terry de la Mesa Allen, the commander of the 1st Infantry Division (and Gen. Roosevelt's boss), but even he isn't spared when he makes an unwise attack and loses several hundred casualties.

There are things the book doesn't cover, that's true. It makes almost no mention of the technical difficulties American troops had when first confronting the Axis armies, and almost no mention of the inferiority of early equipment like the Stuart tank or early tank destroyers. When later equipment arrives (the M-10 Wolverine for instance) you only know it when the American army has some destroyed. Atkinson, however, is much more interested in the people, and especially the leaders, than he is in the gizmos.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's not that long (less than 600 pages of text) and the narrative flows wonderfully. There are numerous anecdotes that are priceless: Italian soldiers surrendering carrying dirty pictures in their pockets along with the address of a cousin who lives in Detroit or Brooklyn, Patton complaining at Casablanca that the president's Secret Service agents all smelled of liquor, Ernest Harmon (the second commander of the 1st Armored Division in the campaign) is described as a cobra without the snake charmer. The narrative flow is wonderful, the maps illustrate the action well. The only quibble I did have was wondering which actions involving the British Army he was choosing to include, or exclude. Never could tell what his criteria was. That aside, and the note about the author not wanting to emphasize heroism, this is an extraordinary and compelling book, perhaps the best on World War II in a decade, perhaps even longer.

The son of a veteran of the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion who survived the battles at the Kasserine Pass and El Guettar, I read "An Army at Dawn" in an attempt to supplement the war stories my father and several of his comrades in arms told when I was a small child. I have often dreamed of visiting those battlefields and the military graveyards which hold thousands of heroes that fell in the North African campaign, heroes who never lived to have sons like myself. While I have not yet fulfilled those dreams, Rick Atkinson right away set me off on my journey in his magnificent prologue, as if he knew me personally and knew exactly what I sought from his book. He writes, "Even when the choreography of the armies is understood ... we crave intimate detail of individual men in individual foxholes ... The dead resist such intimacy ... but history can take us there, almost ... For among mortal powers, only imagination can bring back the dead." While I read "An Army at Dawn" my father lived again as a 24 year old on the great adventure which shaped both his life and mine.