Ryan's research is to be commended but this book could use maps to help the reader understand all the detail about cities, positions, troop movements, etc. The personal perspective of individual soldiers is good but hard to follow all this without detailed maps, including designations of various entities. A reference section on characters would be helpful too with hundreds of names involved...EAF

Without a doubt, the best book on World War II. I have also seen the movie and I find it interesting that those who were quoted in the book were used as the film producer/director saw fit. That is, they used the dialogue from the book, but attributed it to different characters in the movie. However, if one just saw the movie it would not make a difference. An excellent book, I really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to know about D-Day.