"Best Market-Garden book post 'A Bridge Too Far'" Topic

In your humble opinion, what is the best Market-Garden book published since A Bridge Too Far. Bonus points if it is also post Enigma moving into the public domain.

"It never Snows in September" by Robert Kershaw, looking at things from the German perspective is a good one. I think the After the Battle set of two books is a fabulous reference as well.

Martin Middlebrook's "Arnhem: the airborne battle."

Both of the above.

If forced to pick one, then 'It Never Snows in September', but Middlebrook has an excellent analysis of what went wrong and what went right.

Checking online reviews of those titles (yes trust issue noted) indicates that either the books or the reviewers only think in terms of Arnhem and not Market Garden. Acceptable in Middlebrook's case but is Kershaw solely Arnhem orientated or is INSIS Operation wide in scope?

I would need to double check, but iIf i recall correctly it covers all the fighting along the corridor from Joes Bridge to Arnhem.

It goes into great detail about the adhoc Battlegroups that were set up and is a great read.

Recommended.

Middlebrooks tome is also very good, giving some great coverage to Oosterbek.

As for the US part, there isnt anything like the above two books but plenty of unit histories that give great coverage.

V

Kershaw covers Market Garden

link

Fietstocht Market garden

Definitely Kershaw, and yes, he does cover MARKET-GARDEN rather than just Arnhem itself.

Kershaw covers the entire operation. Middlebrooke refers to it but the focus is on Arnhem.

Thanks. This is good info.

Thanks everyone.

Long flight to Las Vegas coming up.

I'll throw in another vote for Kershaw and Middlebrooke, I read them both a few years ago.

The more recent Osprey on the Market Garden campaign does a decent job of distilling the more modern research (including Kershaw) into a single slim volume. One of their better efforts.

Kershaw can be as exciting as David Glantz in places:) whereas Middlebrook is a real page turner.

Another recommendation for both Kershaw & Middlebrook.

Kershaw also has excellent maps, at least in the hardback version. He is also in the probably unique position of being:
(a) a trained paratroop officer
(b) a military historian
(c) Bilingual English/German speaker (his mother is German)
(d) A former NATO Liasion Officer to the Bundeswehr with direct access to their historical archives.

"Arnhem" by A.D. Harvey (particularly good in that it doesn't limit itself to the views of the contemporary British establishment, and thus examines things which are not adequately examined in some other books).
"The Devil's Birthday" by G. Powell
"It Never Snows In September" by R.J. Kershaw

Mark H.

Urquhart thought that Powell's 'The Devil's Birthday' was the best 'Arnhem' book.

Another recommendation here for Kershaw. I'd also recommend the two-volume After The Battle book, but it's pricey. Tim Saunders' three-volume set of little guidebooks (Hell's Higghway, Nijmegen and The Island) are also excellent

Powell's is undoubtedly an excellent Arnhem book, but as it's by an officer who was there with 1st Airborne, it does tend to gloss over the failings of 1st Airborne and the bitterness shines through as he tries to pin as much of the blame as possible onto other formations. His criticisms of XXX Corps in particular, appear to be his own opinion rather than the result of detailed research into XXX Corps' operations. For example, he derides the Irish Group for dawdling at Eindhoven, while completely failing to mention that they spent the best part of that day fighting a German Para kampfgruppe (reinforced by large numbers of AT guns) at Aalst.

Re AD Harvey, I'll have to have another look, but at the time I read it I thought it was just a regurgitation of facts presented in other books and I've never looked at it since.