![]() ![]() In Ryan’s tragic masterpiece A Bridge Too Far (1974), Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s uncharacteristically bold plan to end the war in 1944 by crossing the Rhine in Holland sets in motion the greatest airborne assault in history. Ryan captures the nervous anticipation felt by Allied servicemen and French civilians as they await the signal to invade chronicles the confused German response to the Allied onslaught and provides cinematic depictions of the grim battle for Ste.-Mère-Église, the desperate assault on the Merville battery, and the bloody struggle to move inland from Omaha Beach. The Longest Day is a democratic history in which American paratrooper John Steele, hanging from a church steeple in the midst of battle, and German infantryman Josef Häger, trapped inside a besieged bunker, share the stage with top commanders General Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. ![]() ![]() For each book Ryan interviewed or corresponded with hundreds of military veterans and civilian participants, weaving their individual stories together in books at once epic in scale and intimate in focus. ![]() A veteran journalist fascinated by the experiences of “ordinary people caught up in fear and crisis,” Cornelius Ryan combined exhaustive research with a novelist’s gift for storytelling in his brilliant World War II classics. ![]()
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