The Patrol Zone

“The second volume of Mr. Atkinson’s trilogy on the liberation of Europe hits bookstores Tuesday (as it happens, in the middle of Ken Burns’s World War II series, ‘The War,’ on PBS).

“A longtime correspondent and editor for The Washington Post, the 54-year-old Mr. Atkinson won his second Pulitzer for the trilogy’s opening volume, describing the North African campaign, an often disastrous endeavor that nonetheless helped whip the Allied armies into shape. His second volume, “The Day of Battle,” picks up with the murky story of the campaign in Sicily and Italy, about which there is still angry debate as to whether, unlike Normandy, it was even worth fighting.”

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