My Favorite History

Since I’m revealing everything under the sun, I thought I’d share with you what I’m currently reading. It’s an opportunity for me to expose my cerebral side (yes, hard to believe someone as good looking as me has a brain as well). So the book currently parked on my nightstand is Rick Atkinson’s “An Army at Dawn.”

An Army At Dawn is the first installment of a three-volume history of the Allied liberation of Europe in World War II. The second volume, a history of the war in Italy, and the third volume, a history of the war in Western Europe, will be published in the coming years.

Atkinson, who is also the offer of “The Long Gray Line”, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for History for his depiction of the North African campaign with “An Army at Dawn”.

Many don’t realize that one of my interests is history, and more specifically I find World War II history to be very cool stuff. Two recent reads (both from author James Bradley) on the topic. Bradley’s “Flags of Our Fathers”, chronicles of the 6 men, one of which was Bradley’s father, who raised the Stars and Stripes over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima and how their lives were forever affected by the event.

I also read Bradley’s “Fly Boys”, which recounts the tales of several American pilots who were held captive on a small island in the South Pacific and inevitably met their demise at the hands of their Japanese captors.

Now I’ve switch campaigns from the Pacific to the European theatre. I’m through the prologue and the first couple of chapters and so far it’s everything I expected.

If you enjoy American history, I would recommend CSpan’s “Booknotes: Stories from American History”, which is a series of essays from leading historians on events that shaped the American fabric. There’s a ton of great not so obvious insight into history from the Boston Tea Party through the September 11th terrorist attacks.

These are great snippets of info that can be consumed in small batches, which is perfect for someone like me. I tend to curl up with my books after midnight, so I’m lucky if I can stay awake for an hour or so to get in a couple of good chapters.