Well written, fast pace reading. The story told from the perspective of participants, both behind the action, the planners, and from the point of the soldier on the ground. An excellent way to tell the story. Looking forward the book #3.

Shaara's epilogues are always gut wrenching, and this novel is no exception. He reminds us that not all people die on the battlefield, some die years afterwards from the scars of the war.

Shaara nails it again, combining accurate history and major players (Eisenhower, Rommel, Montgomery, Bradley, Patton, Gavin) with fictional minor players to let the reader experience the D-Day invasion in all its terror, confusion, and triumph. If you aren't a student of WWII, this is the book to put you there (along with 'The Guns at Last Light' by Rick Atkinson.) If you know the D-Day story, this is the book to add a layer of experience to the facts you already know. Esoteric lesson: pilots fe...

A 20 hour unabridged audiobook. Almost worthy of 3 stars, but alas, only getting two. Just too much glossed over for my taste such as nothing about big events in Italy (Rome fell on the eve of D-Day), the Eastern Front being largely ignored, a repeat of strategy already detailed quite well in other books (there's a plethora of DDay related books out there). I just didn't feel this work was a valuable addition unless you're a huge fan of historical fiction. Overall, it was okay, and it pains me t...

Here we move on to the events leading up to and involving Normandy, Operation Overlord, D day. The events of the war in Southern Europe and Africa, the feud between Patton and Montgomery... The horror and death involved.

Again told through the eyes of the participants as Shaara imagines them we get the events as they happened told in an interesting way.

“But his mind brought him back to the march, one foot in front of the other, rocks in the soft mud, the soft echo of footsteps of so many who were no longer there.” (3.5 stars) “The Steel Wave” is the second book in Jeff Shaara’s trilogy about the war in Europe during WW II. As is usual Shaara writes best when he is depicting regular troops in battle. In this text, he brings back a fictional character from the book’s predecessor, “The Rising Tide”, paratrooper Jesse Adams. A lot of the text is t...

The second book in the World War II series gives us the build up into D-day and the aftermath in the battle in France.
You get the points of view of all the key players, Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Rommel, as well as, paratroopers, such as Jesse Adams.
These soldiers are all real players, Shaara does a wonderful job interweaving their thoughts and actions throughout this story.

In fiction the middle book in a trilogy often suffers. It is a transition from point A to point B. The first book introduces the crisis. In the second book the main characters suffer a set back. In the final book the crisis comes to a head and the good guys emerge victorious. This doesn't really apply to Shara's brand of historical fiction. The Steel Wave, I think, will be the best of the three books. It is the tipping point. The Germans have been rocked back in Africa and Italy and are sufferin...

I'm a Shaara fan because of the way he makes war personal. You feel like you know and admire and respect the main players in his books, and understand their motivations for the decisions they make. This book had none of that. Every character sounded the same to me--no personality. I also felt like there were a lot of boring details that made it hard to see the big picture of what happened on D-Day. It ended up being a hard book to get through for me.

Jeff Shaara’s father famously authored the historical novel, “Gettysburg.” Since, fils has written a prequel and a sequel to his father’s opus, as well as similar historical novels about the Revolutionary War, the Mexican American War, the First World War, and the Second World War. This is the second of a World War II trilogy, the first having focused on the American war in the Sahara. The focus here is D-Day.Much has been written about D-Day—fictional and historical. Is there still room for yet...