•June 25, 2025•

by R. Eden Martin

Rick Atkinson is one of America’s most highly acclaimed historians. Known for both his scholarly rigor and his narrative skill, in the field of military history, he surely has no contemporary equal. He is perhaps best known for his widely-praised liberation trilogy — his three books which tell the story of the Allied invasions and campaigns in Europe during World War II: North Africa, Italy, and Normandy. 

Atkinson is now well into his next trilogy, which tells the story of America’s battles for independence from Great Britain, as well as the related political and military struggles in Europe involving France and Spain. The first of these volumes, published in 2019, The British Are Coming, received high praise for weaving the large picture of events and strategy with the day-to-day lives of soldiers and civilians caught up in the conflict. The second volume, entitled The Fate of the Day, was published two months ago and has already received equally enthusiastic praise from reviewers. The New York Times called it “great history … compulsively readable … There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Atkinson.” This new volume covers the middle of the war, 1777–1780, from Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston. 

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