Rick Atkinson is a military historian and author of The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, to be published in May 2019 as the first volume in the Revolution Trilogy. He is also author of the Liberation Trilogy about the World War II in the Mediterranean and Western Europe. The first volume of that series, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, received the Pulitzer Prize for history and was acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal as “the best World War II battle narrative since Cornelius Ryan’s classics, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far.” The second volume, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, drew praise from the New York Times as “a triumph of narrative history, elegantly written…and rooted in the sight and sounds of battle.” The final volume, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, ranked #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The Wall Street Journal called it “a magnificent book,” and the New York Times Book Review described it as “a tapestry of fabulous richness and complexity…The Liberation Trilogy is a monumental achievement.”

            Born in Munich, Germany, Atkinson is the son of a U.S. Army officer and grew up on military posts. He holds a master of arts degree in English literature from the University of Chicago. He worked as a reporter, foreign correspondent, and senior editor for more than 20 years at the Washington Post. His earlier books include The Long Gray Line, Crusade, and In the Company of Soldiers. Among his many other awards are the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service, awarded to the Post for investigative articles directed and edited by Atkinson on shootings by District of Columbia police officers. He lives in Washington, D.C.