Citizen Soldiers [Paperback]

Stephen E. Ambrose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1997

The U.S. Army from the Normandy beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany. June 7, 1944 - May 7, 1945

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster 'A Touchstone Book', nd (1997), c (1997)
• ASIN: B0018XN7I0
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (311 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Dr. Stephen Ambrose was a renowned historian and acclaimed author of more than 30 books. Among his New York Times best-sellers are: Nothing Like It in the World, Citizen Soldiers, Band of Brothers, D-Day - June 6, 1944, and Undaunted Courage.He was not only a great author, but also a captivating speaker, with the unique ability to provide insight into the future by employing his profound knowledge of the past. His stories demonstrate how leaders use trust, friendship and shared experiences to work together and thrive during conflict and change. His philosophy about keeping an audience engaged is put best in his own words: "As I sit at my computer, or stand at the podium, I think of myself as sitting around the campfire after a day on the trail, telling stories that I hope will have the members of the audience, or the readers, leaning forward just a bit, wanting to know what happens next." Dr. Ambrose was a retired Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans. He was the Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans, and the founder of the National D-Day Museum. He was also a contributing editor for the Quarterly Journal of Military History, a member of the board of directors for American Rivers, and a member of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council Board. His talents have not gone unnoticed by the film industry. Dr. Ambrose was the historical consultant for Steven Spielberg's movie Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks purchased the film rights to his books Citizen Soldiers and Band of Brothers to make the 13-hour HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. He has also participated in numerous national television programs, including ones for the History Channel and National Geographic.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific, Entertaining Look At Allied Drive Into Germany, August 1, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany (Paperback)

No one has been more prolific or entertaining in his efforts to bring the gritty, unit-level personal experiences of the Allied drive from Normandy into Germany to the public's attention than Stephen Ambrose. In his series of books including "D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War Two", "Band Of Brothers", "The Victors", and "Citizen Soldiers", he has masterfully employed a little-known treasure trove of personal interviews with thousands of Allied soldiers to marshal an absolutely absorbing, captivating, and insightful treatise on the nature of combat as experienced by the men and women in the forefront of action as it transpired all along the front.

In this volume he concentrates on the drive from Normandy all the way into the heart of Germany, and covering as much ground as the Allies conquered in that fateful year is a considerable accomplishment. This makes for fascinating and entertaining reading. A great deal of ground is covered, from the consolidation of the beachheads in Normandy to the relatively quick liberation of Paris, from the ill-fated Operation Market-Garden assault into Holland in September to the disastrous bloodbath in Omar Bradley's catastrophic excursion into the Hurtigen Forest, from the desperate clashes around Bastogne in the wintry Battle of the Bulge to the long, costly drive that unusually cold and snowy winter into Germany itself. As a result, we don't find the level of detail or strict chronology he employed in "D-Day", for example, or the kind of comprehensive coverage of specific events like the Battle of the Bulge that one finds in books like John Toland's "Battle".

This does not mean one doesn't learn a great deal about all these events transpiring during that fateful year; on the contrary, there is much in the way of provocative information and startling perspective offered here on each of these events. Yet it is unfair to expect a book addressing itself to the totality of the Allied campaign to do so comprehensively in less than 500 pages. Certainly anyone reading the corpus of all the Ambrose works on the year 1944-45 as is represented by the books mentioned above gets a very comprehensive feel for the progress of the war effort in Europe. Still, to gain the kind of comprehensive and strictly chronological information a complete history requires, one must look elsewhere, to tomes such as "A World At Arms", or "A War To Be Won", or even the comfortable, veritable, and well-worn "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich", my own personal favorite.

Mr. Ambrose has become a virtual cottage industry in the World War Two section of your local bookstore, while he has also published works such as his recent best seller on explorers Lewis and Clark. Meanwhile, he has become phenomenally successful because many of his books have captured the public's imagination by being so readable, entertaining, and informative. While popular success doesn't always equate to critical worthiness, in his case it consistently seems to. This is a wonderfully worthwhile, eminently researched, exhaustively documented, and superbly narrated book on the most critical last year of the war in Europe. Enjoy!

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy of All the Praise It Has Garnered, April 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany (Paperback)

Ambrose is a master of well-documented historical non-fiction. His portrait of foot soldiers in WWII Europe is loaded with details about combat that only those who have been there can know. These details describing the terror, misery, and unexpected aspects of war gleaned from hundreds of interviews of ordinary soldiers give the book a depth and breadth not found in any other WWII account I've ever read. Ambrose artfully entwines these many short firsthand stories around the larger historical narrative of the allied liberation of Western Europe from D-Day to VE-Day.

I'm sure this book, because of its faithful portrayal of reality, will appeal to those who were there as well as those who were not. For me it brought to life the adventure as well as the overwhelming fear and hardships that my own father must have lived through as a soldier in Patton's army in North Africa and post D-Day Europe. I imagine the stories he never told would have been much like the hundreds of stories in this outstanding book. I cannot recommend it highly enough, especially when comparing it to Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation." Brokaw's book is interesting and enjoyable but shallow compared to Ambrose's far more thorough account. Both books are good reading, but if I could only choose one of them, "Citizen Soldiers" wins hands down. It will give you an deep and abiding appreciation of what the WWII generation did for our nation and the world at great cost to themselves.

49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A very well written book by a very mediocre historian., January 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany (Paperback)

Whether you loved the film "Saving Private Ryan" or hated it, there is no doubt that it had a major cultural impact in reviving public interest in WWII. As a huge military history buff, I have not seen such a wonderful cornucopia of new and re-released books on a single subject, WWII, since the big Civil War craze that followed the success of Ken Burns' documentary.

Like that Civil War craze, the current popular interest in WWII has seen the release of some truly great books, some mediocre ones, and just plain wasted pulp. "Citizen Soldiers" fits somewhere in between great and mediocre. It is well-written, has some terrific stories, and provides a nice introduction to people who are new to the field of military history.

The problem with the book is Ambrose. Ambrose has become the unofficial "WWII expert" in American popular culture. His name will be seen on the forwards of new WWII books. His face and pleasant voice used for documentaries or interviews. He has, in fact, become the WWII equivilent to the Civil War craze's Shelby Foote. Ambrose is a good writer; but an average historian. "Citizen Soldiers" is nothing more than a collection of secondary source material and the recollections of old veterans. Interesting reading to be sure; but lazily researched history. Also Ambrose's jingoism and hero worship(especially of Eisenhower which is seen in virtually all of his WWII books) can get a little tiresome, especially knowing that he is a professional historian and not a novelist turned amateur historian like Foote. If a reader really wants to know what it was like to be a combat soldier in the ETO check out "Company Commander" by Charles MacDonald or "The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo" by Glover Johns. Both of these books were written by combat veterans less than five years after the war. Also both were used heavily as source material for "Citizen Soldiers." Johns' book is, unfortunatly, out of print, but available through many libraries. MacDonald's book, though, was just recently reprinted- thank you, Steven Speilberg.