TEN DAYS TO D-DAY: Citizens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion

Stafford (Spies Beneath Berlin ) does an excellent job of re-creating the tensions and anticipations of those who were preparing to fight on D-Day, and the stakes involved for (and often desperate movements of) nonmilitary people on the ground in Europe. Churchill, Eisenhower, Hitler and De Gaulle are here, along with Canadian rifleman Glenn Dickin; Norwegian resister Peter Moen; French resister Sonia d'Artois; double agent Juan Pujol; Albert Grunberg, who was Jewish and in hiding in Paris; and myriad Americans. (May 4)