Band of BrothersE Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Perhaps World War II's most astonishing regiment
Not many professors could step away from the rarefied realm of academic prose and reel off a work of nonfiction that reads like a novel. That's precisely what Stephen Ambrose — author of impressive studies on Nixon and Eisenhower — has done with Band of Brothers. The book follows the paratroopers in Easy Company, one of the toughest, best-trained regiments in the whole of World War II. What makes this book come alive are Ambrose's incredible depictions of combat, and his ability to draw out the palpable bonds that developed as his soldiers endured hardship after hardship.

The book starts by describing the sometimes sadistic paratrooper training that narrowed 5,000 volunteers to 1,000 hardened survivors. Easy Company is made up of these survivors, who are then promptly shipped to the European theater for D-Day. Ambrose's description of the historic landing is one of Band of Brothers' centerpieces: with masterful detail, Ambrose narrates how, amidst hellish surroundings, artillery bombardment and ongoing aerial fighting, the group destroys four of the Germans' fearful 105 millimeter cannons. Easy Company proceeds through Europe, and the capstone of the regiment's fighting comes when it occupies Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden — even going so far as to drink the dictator's champagne.

Actor Cotter Smith provides gravel-voiced narration that recalls Ambrose's own cadences (roughened by a lifetime of smoking). The battle scenes are appropriately tense, but Cotter rarely seems to break a sweat, skillfully winding his way through Ambrose's sculpted prose. Throughout, Ambrose's portraits of the men in Easy Company are spot-on. There are, of course, many family men who simply want to return home, but Band of Brothers becomes especially engaging when describing the rarer oddballs: the misanthropic, hated commanding officer whose own sons don't attend his funeral; the boyish, painfully naïve soldier killed by a souvenir Luger that inexplicably fires while in his pocket.