Review of Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers, by Stephen A. Ambrose, is a brief book summarizing the role E Company, first platoon, played in World War II. Ambrose compiles his information from interviews with the survivors of the company, and from the historical record, and presents the information in an organized chronology, from basic training up until the surrender of Germany. Band of Brothers was a rather enjoyable book. Ambrose does a good job of summarizing E Company's activities throughout World War II, and those soldiers he takes extra care to focus on, he illuminates well. Winters, Webster, and Sobel, for example, are written about in such a way that it's almost like the reader knows them personally.
Other soldiers fair less well. Many of the enlisted men, for example, are mentioned, but only because of telling event, humorous or serious, that illustrates enlisted life, (the man who won 6000 dollars in a craps game,) or the man who got drunk and then did something foolish, but then are not mentioned for another sixty or seventy pages, leaving me with no idea who they were.
This matters, because when Ambrose tells you so and so got killed, you have no idea who he's talking about, unless you go back to a previous section and find the person's name.
This flaw, however, isn't Ambrose’s fault. There were 2000 soldiers in E. company, about 150 in the first platoon, and to keep track of them all would have required a book of what I assume would have been five or six full volumes, and this book isn't that, obviously.
Ambrose excels, or the subject matter allows him to excel, in showing war on a small scale. Things that other military historians summarize in one sentence, "the fighting on Utah beach was fierce,) Ambrose takes fifty pages to explain, and this is all to the good. He conveys the sense of battle, of struggle, and shows how what have now become historical battles were awful things to those who had to live through them, and often weren't seen in the larger context by those men.
The chronology of the company’s exploits, from basic training, to jump school, and the actual fighting they did in the war, is done well, and with a sense of continuity.
If you imagine that the Company is the novel’s main character, which I suppose it is, then Ambrose’s neglect of individual enlisted men, which I’ve already mentioned as being unavoidable, is much less irksome.
Ambrose does a good job showing why E company did such a good job during the war, and what the aggregate mental state of the Company was during a given engagement.
If you’re a fan of military history, World War II, or good nonfiction in general, I recommend Band of Brothers. It’s not exactly a page turner, due to the density of information, but it’s a worthwhile read in the end.