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Rick Atkinson
Axel Springer Fellow - Class of Fall 2009
Author and Historian
Biography
Rick Atkinson is an award-winning historian and journalist. He worked at the Washington Post for 25 years as a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent, including three years as the newspaper's Berlin bureau chief. He has written five works of military history, including the first two volumes of the Liberation Trilogy, a narrative account of the American role in the liberation of Europe during the Second World War. Volume I of the trilogy, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, earned him one of his three Pulitzer Prizes. Volume II, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, published in 2007, was described by Sir Michael Howard in the Times Literary Supplement as “one of the truly outstanding records of the Second World War.”
American Academy Project
The Liberation Trilogy, Volume III
At the Academy, Atkinson will conduct research for the trilogy’s final volume, tentatively scheduled for publication in the fall of 2012, in which he will examine the last year of the war from the invasion of Normandy to Germany’s surrender in 1945.
Lecture Summary
Bringing Back the Dead: History, Memory, and Writing about WWII
Fall 2009 Axel Springer Fellow Rick Atkinson, a three-time Pulitzer winner and veteran reporter for the Washington Post, spoke about the final volume of his Liberation Trilogy, the last year of the war, from the invasion of Normandy to Germany’s surrender in 1945. For nearly two million American soldiers, Atkinson reminds, the war ended in the decisive final campaign launched at Normandy. »