Velocemente vi segnalo KILLING PATTON, finito da poco e molto consigliato per gli amanti di libri sul secondo conflitto mondiale. Gli autori, Bill O’Reilly e Martin Dugard, ci guidano in un affascinante viaggio nell’ultimo anno di guerra, attraverso gli occhi del generale Patton ma anche di tutti i protagonisti del periodo: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, comandanti alleati ed eroici soldati. Un affascinante spaccato sia di epiche battaglie come quella di Bastogne, ma anche di come diversi scenari avrebbero potuto salvare metà dell’Europa dalla dominazione sovietica. Forse Patton non è stato ucciso, ma di sicuro fu tra i primi a capire che lo stalinismo non era certo meglio del nazismo e a farsi parecchi nemici. Un libro sicuramente valido anche per i profani, per come sa rendere la storia appassionante senza scadere per forza nel banale…

alberto cavalasca

Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General is a book written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard about the final year of World War II and the death of General George Patton, specifically about whether or not it was an accident or an assassination. 

Writing in The Washington Post, Richard Cohen criticized the book’s “chaotic structure” and “considerable padding,” calling the work a “clunky hagiography.” Cohen was especially critical of O’Reilly’s “repellent admiration” for Patton, who Cohen calls an “anti-Semite. In The New Republic, James Wolcott dismissed the book as O’Reilly’s “latest papier-mâché exercise in necrobiography. Patton biographer and documentary film-maker Robert Orlando described Killing Patton and O’Reilly’s “Killing” series as “not about new or penetrating discovery, but the same ol’ same ol’ only through this greatly successful marketer and his hired writer — a scheduled feeding for an audience already ‘on the farm.

O’Reilly has responded, “Killing Patton is not a biography of the general, but a look at his performance during the end of World War II and his very strange death. The narrative was tight; we stayed in that area. He [Patton] was a crusty guy, although there is no excuse for his vitriol against innocent people. The far-left is desperate, desperate to disparage Killing Patton because they despise General Patton and they despise me. It pains them to see the overwhelming success of the book.