Product Description

A description of life in the Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, US Army, from the time of their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory. Drawing on interviews, journals and letters, the author tells - often in their own words - the story of these American heroes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5810 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
As grippingly as any novelist, preeminent World War II historian Stephen Ambrose uses Band of Brothers to tell the horrifying, hallucinatory saga of Easy Company, whose 147 members he calls the nonpareil combat paratroopers on earth circa 1941-45. Ambrose takes us along on Easy Company's trip from gruelling basic training to Utah Beach on D-day, where a dozen of them turned German cannons into dynamited ruins resembling "half-peeled bananas", on to the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of part of the Dachau concentration camp, and a large party at Hitler's "Eagle's Nest", where they drank the his (surprisingly inferior) champagne. Of Ambrose's main sources, three soldiers became rich civilians; at least eight became teachers; one became Albert Speer's jailer; one prosecuted Robert Kennedy's assassin; another became a mountain recluse; the despised, sadistic CO who first trained Easy Company (and to whose strictness many soldiers attributed their survival of the war) wound up a suicidal loner whose own sons skipped his funeral. The Easy Company survivors describe the hell and confusion of any war: the senseless death of the nicest kid in the company when a souvenir Luger goes off in his pocket; the execution of a GI by his CO for disobeying an order not to get drunk. Despite the gratuitous horrors it relates, Band of Brothers illustrates what one of Ambrose's sources calls "the secret attractions of war ... the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction ... war as spectacle". --Tim Appelo

Customer Reviews

Moving Account of Easy Company
Stephen E. Ambrose has written a very good account of the history of E-Company, which has now been turned into a major television series. I read this book in a couple of days and have to confess that it makes compelling reading. Those who have never experienced combat cannot fully understand what people like the young men that made up E-Company went through, but this account helps us to appreciate the debt we all owe to ones like Major Winters and the rest of the allied forces that defeated Nazi Germany in WWII. In an age where celebrity and hero worship are bandied around too liberally, these men show us that the real hero's are those who quietly do their job against a backdrop of constant danger and death.

One part of the book that demonstrates Ambrose's skill as a historian is the account of the attack upon Foy. This is contained in the chapter entitled: "The Breaking Point." Ambrose states: "Back in '42 the question was, Can a citizen army be trained and prepared well enough to fight Germans in a protracted campaign in Northwest Europe?" E-Company faced this test during this encounter with the Germans and the book provides the answer given by these young men to their test.

Ambrose relates events in a balanced way and is not blinded by the natural trap of accepting everything that he is told by those whose experiences make up the account. After reading this book you will be filled with an awe of the young men that fought and died to help remove the dark threat of Nazi Germany and retain the freedom that we all have enjoyed since that dangerous time. This book does not glorify the war, but simply tells it as it happened.

Great read through an amazing era of military history...
If you are not accustomed to reading books concerning military history and/or are not familiar with this stage of World War II, I'd highly recommend that you watch the BBC/HBO series first. It's very accurate to what is written in the book with good character acting to the main guys involved in Easy Company, 506th PIR of the 101st Airborne.

The book is well written, with Ambrose setting out the events of each day/engagement/battle/incident, and then using quotes and excerpts from other books and memoirs to illustrate how it was for the actual men in those incidents. A lot of the quotes are directly from interviews the author had with the various enlisted men and officers who took part in D-Day and beyond. It is stated towards the end of the book that Ambrose was in constant contact with the veterans of Easy Company and showed them drafts of the book to make comments and corrections on. So this book is pretty much the definitive history of Easy Company's part in World War II, from the birth of the company to through D-Day and then duties of Occupation in Germany etc.

The book loses one star for these down points:
It IS hard not to be in awe of what Easy Company and all the 101st achieved, but in one or two places, objectivity would have been prefered to all out adoration. If you are a Brit and have any soft spot for the achievements of the British contribution to the Allied advance in 1944, be prepared for the author to spurt out the odd punch to British forces. In a lot of places he seems to suggest that the British were blind, ignorant, and badly trained buffoons; and takes one or two unprofessional incidents to act as a general overview of British standards.

The minor sour grapes accepted, this is still a fantastic book, and there will be something on every page that will make you smile, or shock, or bring you close to tears. Every World War II enthusiast and history fan should read this book!

The Book That Led To The TV Series
Well worth a read, even if you've seen the TV series, that will provide you with more information on Easy company, and will increase your enjoyment of the TV series if, make that when, you watch it again.
You might think that the written word will not come close to the impact of the images and sound of the TV series, but with "Band of brother", for me the best of Stephen Ambrose's books, he comes very close to matching that impact. Plus, with the luxury that the written word allows, provides you with far more information on Easy Company, how the harsh training under Captain Sobel helped forge the company, and the hardships it faced, and survived, during combat.
Remember, this is not a novel, but the recollections of a group of American soldiers, who present an American view of the war. If you want to read about other nations contributions to the war, look elsewhere ("Pegasus Bridge" where Ambrose attempts to do for the British para what he did for the American with "Band Of Brothers"), but don't blame Ambrose, and don't close yourself off to this book.
If you did, you would be denying yourself an insight into what makes soldiers fight, how in even the most inhuman conditions they can maintain their humanity towards their comrade, and the hardships they suffer for us.