I found parts of this book quite engaging and other parts a bit of a slog. On the whole, Beevor does a good job of relating the complex story of the battle for France from the D-Day landings to the liberation of Paris. The most shocking part of it is the large proportion of Allied casualties which were a result of friendly fire, mainly from the air force and artillery bombing their own troops by mistake. This is what I would call a "popular history" book - not a huge amount of insight, but it gets the story told and is always readable, although I found Beevor's style somewhat hackneyed at times. His extensive use of oral sources and fondness for so-called "telling details" result in some dubious anecdotes which seem to have more to do with Hollywood than real history.

Having read his brilliant books on Stalingrad and Berlin, I was expecting a lot. Unfortunately, it didn’t really live up to expectations. I found it a bit hard going at times and it darts all over the place. He used a lot of oral testimony which was often unnamed and leant more to a pub discussion or a Hollywood version of events. It seems the Americans did it all by themselves with little regard to the significant contributions from the rest of the Allies. I hadn’t realised that there were more men in the British armies than Americans on D-Day. Which the book is not really about. It’s about the battle for Normandy and not D-Day itself. I suspect that is for publicity purposes and am more convinced Beevor is more about making a living on popular history rather than great contributions to history. Disappointing and was quite pleased to finish it and move on to something else.

Having read this book, which was mainly how the American's being the only ones there, with the British/Canadians and the odd Polish soldier were there to make the numbers up. The authour makes it very clear he doesn't like Montgomery, at times he seems to hate him. He glosses over how the American's made a complete mess in building their Mulberry harbour, only for it to come apart, the British one stayed intact. To sum up, only the American's did the fighting, Montgomery was a joke, the other allied armies didn't have much to do, no mention of the Free French and partisans fighting the German's in German held France. He quotes unnamed people, quotes what some people are thinking at the time. The biggest mistake when he say's an officer went around the (American) soldiers tents to get the women out, some made a "play" for the officer, but he says "I'm a homosexual". Considering it was illegal to be Homosexual, he definitely wouldn't be an officer, in fact he wouldn't be in the Army, as homosexuality could be catching. A total waste of money to buy and even bigger waste of time reading it. No foreword by anyone, especially Sir Max Hastings who supplied much of his material for this book.