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THE FIRST WAVE

Alex Kershaw

The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II

The New York Times bestselling author of The Liberator and Avenue of Spies returns with an utterly immersive, adrenaline-driven account of D-Day combat.
Beginning in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, THE FIRST WAVE follows the remarkable men who carried out D-Day's most perilous missions. The charismatic, unforgettable cast includes the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the British glider pilot who braved antiaircraft fire to crash-land mere yards from the vital Pegasus Bridge; the Canadian brothers who led their troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; as well as a French commando, returning to his native land, who fought to destroy German strongholds on Sword Beach and beyond. Readers will experience the sheer grit of the Rangers who scaled Pointe du Hoc and the astonishing courage of the British airborne soldiers who captured the Merville Gun Battery in the face of devastating enemy counterattacks. The first to fight when the stakes were highest and the odds longest, these men would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europeand the very history of the twentieth century.

The result is an epic of close combat and extraordinary heroism. It is the capstone Alex Kershaw's remarkable career, built on his close friendships with D-Day survivors and his intimate understanding of the Normandy battlefield. For the seventy-fifth anniversary, here is a fresh take on World War II's longest day.

Alex Kershaw is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author of books on World War II. Born in York, England, he is a graduate of Oxford University and has lived in the United states since 1994.
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Book

Published 2019-05-21 by Dutton Caliber

Book

Published 2019-05-21 by Dutton Caliber

Comments

Alex will be the emcee this morning at the 75th D-Day Commemoration at the World War II Memorial in DC. They will mention THE FIRST WAVE in the script to introduce Alex.

The popular podcast Art of Manliness interviewed Alex and published their conversation with him: Podcast #514: Remembering D-Day 75 Years Later Read more...

Alex Kershaw was interviewed on CBSNews' streaming & digital show Red & Blue by Major Garrett about the importance/significance of D-Day and why we remember it 75 years later. This interview ran live at 6pm last night and can be found here (Alex's interview begins at 2:20 and goes until the end of the clip) Read more...

Alex had a great event at the Army & Navy Club yesterday, where he spoke to 75+ Army and Navy veterans and their families. After his presentation, he was in conversation with a WWII veteran and POW who arrived in Normandy about two weeks after D-Day as well as a woman whose father died in Normandy on June 7, 1944. Politics & Prose sold about 30 copies at the event and it was covered by Washington Examiner Read more...

TIME.com interviewed Alex Kershaw (and mentions the book) in a larger story about D-Day Read more...

Meet the assaulters: Pathfinders plunging from the black, coxswains plowing the whitecaps, bareknuckle Rangers scaling sheer rock. Will they secure the landing zone? Wrest the beachhead? Or will that last bridge blow up in their faces? Even if we know how D-Day ends, The First Wave grips with all the power of a first read. Fast-paced and up-close, this is history's greatest story reinvigorated as only Alex Kershaw can.

The Daily Beast published a D-Day story this morning, calling THE FIRST WAVE "very readable" Read more...

The First Wave is Alex Kershaw's stirring tribute to the warriors who successfully carried out the largest and most difficult military operations in history 75 years ago. One of the US First Infantry Division NCO's who survived that desperate day in Normandy later said, 'You can't buy valor and you can't pull heroes off an assembly line.' Kershaw's superb account of D-Day and beyond is the story of their amazing courage under fire and how men ranging from a lord of the realm to the humble son of a president answered the call and began the liberation of occupied Europe from Nazi tyranny.

From the opening pages, when Kershaw.drops us into the invasion of Paris, we know that we are in good hands. This is classic narrative nonfiction, constructed and written like a thriller.

A masterful retelling of the most dramatic day of World War IIthe Allied landings on the beaches of France. In Alex Kershaw's expert hands, readers will feel the sting of the cold surf, smell the acrid cordite that hung in the air, and duck the zing of machine gun bullets whizzing overhead. The First Wave is an absolute triumph.

Alex Kershaw was interviewed on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Willie Geist opened the interview by telling Kershaw, "I can't get enough of this story, I can't read enough about the young men who boarded those ships." Read more...

The New York Times included THE FIRST WAVE in a piece about "5 Books That Shed Light on D-Day" Read more...

Alex wrote two essays for AARP about D-Day (for both print and online) and those essays went online yesterday, you can find them here: https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2019/d-day-bedford.html https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2019/d-day-omaha-beach.html. Read more...

Master storyteller Alex Kershaw brings the key Allied players of D-Day to life once more. He vividly portrays their exploits - Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, French Commandos at Ouistreham, American paratroopers on the Cotentin, and assault troops who hit the Normandy beaches. These pages ooze with the unforgettable human drama of history's most consequential invasion. Read them and you might even feel as though you were there.

UK: Simon & Schuster UK ; Dutch: Balans

Alex Kershaw brilliantly brings a new perspective to one of the seminal events of WWII. The First Wave is an awe-inspiring and important book that portrays the blood on the risers, from Captain Frank Lillyman's airborne pathfinders to Lieutenant George Kerchner's Rangers and their remarkable assault on the cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc. The sights, sounds, and fury of D-Day are vividly captured in Kershaw's virtuoso narrative.

Kershaw's writing is seamless. He incorporates information from a vast array of sources, but it worksyou get a sense of the different voices coming into the story... A gripping read.

Exceptional... balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers.