D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

Beevor gives a thoroughly readable account of the familiar D-Day story, enlivened by a number of telling anecdotes from generals to privates and unvarnished sketches of all the key participants on the Allied and German sides. Nor does Beevor spare us the truly gory details of the battles and the systematized killing that was the Normandy campaign. War is always a bloody business and Beevor rightly refuses to ignore it. This is a refreshingly unsentimental view of things that should never be seen as anything but what they were.

The book is not faultless, however. There are annoying factual and grammatical errors that could have been prevented by an attentive copy editor with minimal knowledge of the era: in the most striking example, Beevor writes of a bombing attack carried out by "B-24 Flying Fortresses" and "B-17 Liberators," when the opposite terminology is of course the correct one. My late father-in-law, a "mickey operator" on Eighth Air Force B-17s in 1944-45, would have turned even greyer at the hearing. And Beevor's troops are forever becoming "disorientated." The correct word is "disoriented."

The narration is technically competent and Cameron Stewart moves it along crisply in a strong, clear voice, but he has an unfortunate habit of adopting rather bad American, French and German voice accents when recounting stories from archival material, military orders, personal diaries, and the like. The Germans all sound like bad actors in a B movie. A straightforward narration in his own voice throughout would have been the better course.

Nevertheless, this is a fine account of one of the world's most significant battles and its ensuing military campaign--one that changed our civilization forever for the better. I commend "D-Day and the Battle for Normandy" to historians, WW II aficionados, and general readers alike.

A solid history of the events immediately leading up to D-Day and the months that followed.

The other reviews are accurate enough to give a good feel for what to expect, but I will just add for the light reader of history, that while the book hits the occasional dry spell, it succeeds in telling a compelling story with dozens of fun and interesting stories of the persons involved.

The audiobook format is a linear one. You can't exactly flick back a few pages to check the details about some place, person or event that has just re-entered the narrative. The progress of war on the other hand is rarely linear: a battle front breaks up into sub-fronts, gets outflanked here, outflanks the enemy there. Lots of stories happening at once.


This is a superbly detailed book, but wow - there's so many battles, place names (in French of course), weaponry, personnel on both sides... so much stuff to keep circulating through my tired old brain. I will find a print copy of this, then I can pore over the maps which I am sure the book will have, I can flick back to previous chapters to remind myself and I can look through the index and citations... and maybe when I have read through it 2 or 3 times I will have wrapped my head around this stupendous piece of history. I would give it 5 out 5 for the story alone, but for me it has to be in print.

(It would appear that when I post this there will be no paragraphs - apologies if it is harder to read as a consequence.)

I've read two of the author's books and part of a third. This would be the fourth book by this author. What I like about Beevor's histories is that he presents the subject from a broad range of perspectives. Like past books, in D-Day he examines the roles of the generals, the colonels and majors,and the grunts of both sides. Of equal importance, he brings to life the civilians and their roles and outcomes from this event. I came away appreciating the sacrifice, pain and desparation of the many who participated in D-Day. I recommend this book.

On the "con" side, the narration is weird in places. The narrator -- Cameron Stewart -- who is obviously English, sounds goofy and cartoonish when he tries to quote Americans in the narrative. He does a good job with all the other accents, but he makes all the US characters sound like warehouse workers from Brooklyn. The narration is the only reason I didn't give this book five stars.

The narrator put forth great efforts when reading direct quotes from others. He used the accents of where the quotes were coming from. The author wrote in a highly descriptive way that brought the reader directly to D-Day.

I really liked how he changed accents for the direct quotes.

If you are into a methodical story of a battle from both sides, then Beevor is a master, and this book is for you. I couldn't stop listening.

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor and Berlin by Antony Beevor

His accents were great. He has brilliant, distinct accents for American Generals, American Soldiers, Canadians, Scottish, German and eccentric Brits, etc... I was pleasantly surprised by his masterful performance

I did, but at 20+ hours, that's not possible. It took me about a month of listening to and from work.

The only criticisms I have is there is far too much focus on the French (especially at the end), and not enough criticism of the French (there seemed to be praise and admiration for them and their pompous attitudes). Also, while it is highlighted, I don't think there is enough criticism of Montgomery's failures. I would have also like to hear more from the German perspective, especially from their home-front. But these criticisms are nothing significant. Overall this is a great book.

My first book by this author. I found it interesting and informative, but not necessarily compelling. Lots of anecdotes and tales of egotism and competition among the Allies, and fairly blunt descriptions of Allied shortcomings. All I can say is, thank goodness Hitler trusted his own counsel.

Looking at other reviews of Beevor I see he is highly respected and this is not rated as the top of his game. I will give one of his more definitive books a read and form a final opinion then.

I have yet to finish this audio book. It just doesn't have the UMPF to keep my attention and I listen to a LOT of historical audio books.