Rate this book

Normandy: A Graphic History Of D-Day, The Allied Invasion Of Hitler's Fortress Europe (2012)

by Wayne Vansant(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0760343926 (ISBN13: 9780760343920)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Zenith Press

review 1: This was free on Comixology recently and I thought it sounded like it was worth a read. It tells the story from the D-Day landing to liberation of Paris in a graphic format. It is not really what I would class as a graphic novel but it is more that than a normal book. Whilst the illustrations are good they serve as little more than something to catch the eye and give out no real information. Everything good here comes from the text.Whilst I knew a little about D-Day I knew virtually nothing about what happened afterwards so I did find this book quite interesting. It does a decent job at telling the events and I liked the way it managed to focus on lots of individuals and small groups, sharing the small victories which were part of the big one. However, the historian in me ... morecouldn't help but leap to the surface whilst I was reading this. For one thing is it felt a little biased towards the American side of things. The British forces were discussed a little and the German side of the story was rarely mentioned. I think it is important to remember that the German's on the front line doing the fighting were just normal soldiers fighting for their country and were just like most of the Brits and Americans fighting. I also was disappointed that there is virtually no verification of facts here. The graphic format allows for individuals to be a quoted in speech marks really well and it wasn't used at all here. There were maybe two or three short contemporary quotes in the whole thing and I didn't feel it was enough. Although my limited knowledge verifies things a little, I have no other evidence that what the author wrote and drew here is accurate. This is perhaps a good read for something who wants to know a bit more about the allied invasion but for anyone who wants detail and contemporary evidence this is not the place to come.
review 2: I am a huge fan on Vansant's work - I have read Vietnam, The Hammer and the Anvil, and Katusha (only released in eBook). Overall he has a great sense of storytelling and historical accuracy that make his work the best kind of history - it is deeply narrative and has a nice line going straight through the story.Normandy is a history of the first two months of the Normandy campaign beginning with the moments before D-Day leading up until the liberation of Paris in August, 1944. Vansant captures individual stories amid the larger story of the largest amphibious assault in history.I LOVE graphic non-fiction and consider Vansant to be among the best practicing the art. less

Download links for: Normandy: A Graphic History of D-Day, The Allied Invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe

Advertising