At the Point of No Return: Pictorial History of the American Paratroopers in the Invasion of Normandy [Hardcover]

Michel de Trez (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: D-Day Publishing (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2960017617
• ISBN-13: 978-2960017618
• Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 9.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,783,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At The Point Of No Return-American Paras at Normandy, January 13, 2000

By 

Glenn A. Sousa (Millbrae, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: At the Point of No Return: Pictorial History of the American Paratroopers in the Invasion of Normandy (Hardcover)

An excellent large format (10x13") hardcover volume with lots of original black & white photos of US Paras during the D-Day Invasion.Many of these photos have not been published before..coming from several soldiers private albums. ALSO, the best part of this book for US Militaria Collectors..are the COLOR photos of original web equipment, helmets, and insignia. Great close-ups on details such as helmet decals, patches, crickets, medical & demolition box contents..Original uniforms are posed on full length mannequins...all color....all sharp photos! Can't beat this book ...breaks up some D-Day uniform myths about crickets, arm insignia, etc. And...to top it all ..it's published by a Frenchman...a studious collector who worked countless hours on this volume to get it right, once and for all!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reference Book !, July 19, 2001

By 

D C van den Bogert (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: At the Point of No Return: Pictorial History of the American Paratroopers in the Invasion of Normandy (Hardcover)

This book has it all; Maps, Close ups, detailed outfits, gear and lots of pictures. Some of the pictures are very impressive (even some in color). I found some pictures of the 506th PIR Easy-Company (Band of Brothers) and having read the Ambrose book I knew what I saw in some of the pictures, gear and posters ! Are you into Para's and Normandy ? Then you'll just have to get this book !

Cheers, Donald

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I found this book disappointing, September 30, 2006

By 

Michael - See all my reviews

This review is from: At the Point of No Return: Pictorial History of the American Paratroopers in the Invasion of Normandy (Hardcover)

I purchased this book along with de Trez's "American Warriors" based on the positive reviews. Now that I have these books in my possession, I'm convinced that the previous reviewers are used to the mediocre or happen to be friendly with the author.
For those not familiar, "American Warriors" is a pictorial history of the US paratroopers in preparation for the invasion of Normandy and "At the Point of No Return" is a pictorial history of the US paratroopers during the invasion. They are meant to compliment each other. In examining both books, it didn't take long for me to figure out that this set was designed to maximize profits for the publisher/author, taking from us readers as much of our hard earned money as possible.
I believe anyone with integrity would have published these books as one complete volume instead of two. This becomes apparent when one sees all of the filler material used to maximize the pages. For example, it is common to see multiple images of the same scene, just taken at a different angle by the war photographer. These replicated images show nothing more and explain nothing more to the reader. There is no reason to include them other than to fill the pages of the book.
In "American Warriors" the author goes even further to fill out the book by including a dozen full page photos of the same reenactors in paratrooper garb, some taken in black and white to give the appearance of being authentic. I did not buy the book to look at photos of reenactors. I bought the book to see the real thing. I did however like seeing the color examples of items from the author's collection, but it is unclear when examining some of these photos what items are part of an original identified grouping, and what items have been added by the author to complete the impression. The text does not clarify this and rarely is any provenance given on the items depicted.
The author explains that his English is poor and admits that the English captions are not what they should be. I am sympathetic to this but with a price tag of $100 for the two volumes, the author should have hired an English editor to correct his sentence structure. It wouldn't have taken long due to the minimal text. Because of the repetition, the author finds little need to add captions to a large portion of the photographs and on others the captions are very short.
Another frustrating aspect of this book is that the author will add a caption such as "A closer look at this photograph shows that the jeep driver wears a helmet of the MP Platoon, Division Headquarters." but guess what? The photo is so small on the page that it is impossible to make out this detail. Numerous times I felt like I was reading a "Where's Waldo?" book, trying to find the piece of equipment the author mentioned only to be frustrated by the small, blurry images depicted.
All in all, this is a poorly designed and poorly written book of marginal quality. It does not deserve the price tag that is on it. For all of you true scholars out there, this is fair warning.