ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING TALKS TO:
With his new book, THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT, historian
and journalist RICK ATKINSON has just completed his
extraordinary three-volume history of the U.S. military’s
role in the World War II liberation of Europe. The first
book, AN ARMY AT DAWN, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize
and the second, THE DAY OF BATTLE, was published in
2007. Atkinson previously spent more than twenty years
as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post. He is also
the best-selling author of three other narrative histories:
THE LONG GRAY LINE, about West Point’s class of 1966;
CRUSADE, about the Persian Gulf War; and IN THE
COMPANY OF SOLDIERS, about the 101st Airborne
division in Iraq.
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Was there a moment – and a book or books – that made you know war would be
your topic, the centerpiece of your remarkable string of books, notably the
Liberation Trilogy?
Probably the closest thing to that kind of commitment was when I began work on a book
about the West Point class of 1966, which had first taken form as a newspaper series in
1981 and eventually was published as THE LONG GRAY LINE in 1989.
Were there books you read in adolescence or college that you remember that were
formative for you and made you think you would/could and should be a
writer/historian?
Oh, sure, perhaps starting with IVANHOE in 8th grade and books like THIS SIDE OF
PARADISE and the inevitable THE CATCHER IN THE RYE early in high school.
When you are researching a given book like THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT, do you make
a list of books you know you have to read? How long is that list for each given
project and, in the case of this particular book, were there a couple that stunned
you, that you thought were really good and advanced your knowledge in new and
unexpected ways?
I keep detailed lists of books, periodicals, and documents that I need to get and read, or at
least make a conscious decision that I'm going to bypass them. For THE GUNS AT LAST
LIGHT, the "books to get" list exceeded 2,500 titles, and I probably at least glanced at
more than half of them. I read somewhere that Amazon.com lists 60,000 hardcover books
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on World War II. Of course there are many marvelous books on the subject. Barnes &
Noble asked me to make a list of my favorite and they include A BRIDGE TOO FAR
(Cornelius Ryan), A WORLD AT ARMS (Gerhard Weinberg), WARTIME (Paul Fussell), and
CONQUEROR'S ROAD (Osmar White.)
Do you love the research and the writing equally?
At times I detest them equally!
Do you have a favorite book of all time?
Not sure that I do. Perhaps the closest would be WAR AND PEACE. For obvious reasons, I
have returned repeatedly to Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy, and to Bruce Catton's
trilogy that ends with A STILLNESS AT APPOMATTOX.
Is there a book (or books) that you would recommend to President Obama?
At the risk of presumption, I would recommend he read my trilogy.
Is there something on your nightstand or in your satchel – we know you are on a
major book tour – that you are reading now?
I'm reading Edward G. Lengel's GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON: A MILITARY LIFE and
Paul Scott's STAYING ON.
Are there books you turn to for relief, for pure fun – or any that reliably make you
laugh?
I love Elmore Leonard, and I often read him, or that crime genre, when I'm at the beach
in Delaware.
Do you read fiction? If so, is there a novel – or a couple – that you love and reread?
I was an English literature graduate student and once upon a time devoured fiction. But
that was long, long ago. I was in India earlier this year and read several novels, including
A PASSAGE TO INDIA (E.M. Forster), which I hadn't read since college and found just as
fabulous now as then, and Kevin Powers' THE YELLOW BIRDS. When I was younger, I
read virtually everything Faulkner wrote. Among contemporary novelists, I'm keen on the
likes of Richard Ford and Hilary Mantel.
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For your Trilogy, did you read novels reflective of that time? Is that part of your
research?
Not particularly, but I do like to read poetry that is either about war or is somehow
evocative of the stress of combat: Keith Douglas, Louis Simpson, or Robert Lowell. At
appearances to promote THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT, I often close by quoting lines from
"Pilgrimage," about a visit to Vicksburg by our current U. S. Poet Laureate Natasha
Trethewey: "In my dream/the ghost of history lies down beside me/rolls over, pins me
beneath a heavy arm."
The Wall Street Journal review of The Guns at Last Light
You spoke at Sun Valley with such mastery of detail, but also with such moral
passion about the cost of war. That feeling seems to be deep in. Where did it come
from? When did it start?
I don't know how you could spend a professional lifetime studying war and not be
convinced that it's an utter catastrophe, even righteous wars. Young men dying young –
and now young women – is simply heartbreaking.
You began as a journalist. Are there journalists out there now you respect and
unfailingly read?
I admire any journalist who puts himself or herself into harm's way. Perhaps the best of
the bunch was my former Washington Post colleague, Anthony Shadid, who died coming
out of Syria a couple years ago. I rely on that fabulous gaggle of World War II journalists
more than most historians do because they often bear witness with eloquence and irony.
They are paid – underpaid, most would have complained – observers, often with a knack
for the telling brushstroke of detail.
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Here are two terrific and lyrical books about the human costs of war: THE YELLOW
BIRDS, the exquisite first novel by KEVIN POWERS, who will be with us this summer.
It is the moving and harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive written by
a veteran of the war in Iraq. Also: HOUSE OF STONE, A MEMOIR OF HOME, FAMILY, AND A
LOST MIDDLE EAST by ANTHONY SHADID, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning
foreign correspondent for The New York Times who died last year in Syria of an asthma
attack at age 43. Of Lebanese-American descent, Shadid wrote about his war-torn
homeland and his own complicated family history.
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