Easton Press leather edition of Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944," one of the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN HISTORY series, a COLLECTOR'S edition, Period Photographs, published in 1959. COLLECTOR'S NOTES is included. Bound in brown leather, the book has decorative paper end leaves, satin book marker, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Cornelius Ryan, who lived from 1920 – 1974, was an Irish American Journalist who was born in Dublin but crossed the Irish Sea to London in 1940.  There he worked for the Daily Telegraph. "The Longest Day" tells the story of D-Day, the first day of the World War II invasion of Normandy. Ryan details the coup de main operation by gilderborne troops, which captured Caen canal and Orne river bridges before the main assault on the Normandy beaches.  The book is based on interviews with a cross-section of participants, including U.S., Canadian, British, French, and German officers. The book begins and ends in the village of La Roche-Guyon, the most occupied village in occupied France.  For each of the 543 inhabitants of La Roche-Guyon there were more than three German soldiers in the village and surrounding area. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, who was fifty-one-years old, was the commander-in-chief of Army Group B. He had his headquarters in the castle of the village. However, Rommel had not protected with mines, bunkers, the carefully deployed machine guns or a host of other anti-invasion devices. When the decisive twenty-four hours were over, they would be no "thousand year Reich." Allied troops, led by General DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER and Generals OMAR BRADLEY, ADMIRAL BERTRAM RAMSEY, Field Marshall, BERNARD MONTGOMERY and Air Chief MARSHALL TEDDER, had consolidated unimpeachable beachheads in Normandy. The greatest American success on D-Day was UTAH BEACH where German soldiers trudged down OMAHA BEACH in defeat. The war in Europe would continue for another year, but the end of Hitler's iron grip on Europe had begun. Ryan's book is divided into three parts: the first part is titled: "The Wait," the second part is named "The Night," and the third part if named "The Day." The book includes a section of the casualties of D-Day. As a young war correspondent, Ryan had personally observed the D-Day invasion, but in his own words, he was then "too horrified and too young to fully appreciate what I saw."  Twenty-five years later, after exhaustive research and more than one thousand interviews with both Allied and German participants, the veteran journalist published "The Longest Day" in 1959---to worldwide popular and critical acclaim.  The book won the Benjamin Franklin and Overseas Press Club Awards. 350 pages.  I offer combined shipping.