31. Cornelius Ryan - The Longest Day

"A true classic of World War II history, The Longest Day tells the story of the massive Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Journalist Cornelius Ryan began working on the book in the mid-1950s, while the memories of the D-day participants were still fresh, and he spent three years interviewing D-day survivors in the United States and Europe. When his book was first published in 1959, it was tremendously successful, establishing many of the legends of D-day that endure in the public's mind. Ryan was enormously skillful at weaving small personal stories into the overall narrative, and he would later use the same technique to depict the airborne invasion of Holland in A Bridge Too Far. Not only is The Longest Day a pleasure to read, but subsequent historians, dutifully noting its accuracy, have relied heavily on Ryan's research for their own accounts. In short, the book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the D-day invasion." - Amazon.com

Since I'm on a kick of reading books that movies were based on, I decided to go for one of my all-time favorite classic movie: The Longest Day. I honestly didn't realize that there was a book it was based on so I was very happy to get my hands on a copy of it. It was a good book too. I'm an avid WWII buff and was pleasantly suprised to find that the movie had stayed close to the book. It was interesting to read all of the personal stories Ryan weaved into the hour by hour account of D-Day. I highly recommend it for any WWII buff.