Together We Stand: America, Britain, and the Forging of an Alliance

James Holland has come from nowhere to produce the best military history book for many years, maybe the best in the last decade. If you enjoy what I call "narrative" military history in the tradition of Cornelius Ryan, Max Hasting and the Rick Atkinson then Together We Stand is a must have book. It is better than the books by any of the three mentioned above and they set very high standards. Together We Stand covers much of the same ground as the excellent An Army At Dawn by Rick Atkinson but starts far earlier in '42. Sixty percent of the book deals with the fighting in the summer and autumn of '42 before Torch and the North African landings. The style is the traditional one of mixing high quality research, operational analysis and person accounts. Only James Holland does this better than even Rick Atkinson, and I am one of those who though the hype surrounding Rick Atkinson's An Army At Dawn was fully justified. James Holland gives greater prominence to the air war than most books and describes that warfare more eloquently than others. But for those more interested in ground warfare, as I am, do not be alarmed as the ground war still gets the majority of the coverage and is covered in great detail. It is a big book at over 700 pages of main text but never falters. An outstanding mixture of analysis, story telling and page turning thriller all in one. I hope there will be a long line of military histories to come from James Holland. In James Holland military history has a new star.