A Bridge Too Far

Hardcover Cloth 670 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Presumed First edition First printing 1974 with corresponding number line. Handsome black boards and silver embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept with slight shelf wear. An unclipped dust jacket is smooth, clean and brilliant with the usual shelf wear - a few tears, scrapes, wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

A Bridge Too Far is Cornelius Ryan's masterly chronicle of the Battle of Arnhem, which marshalled the greatest armada of troop-carrying aircraft ever assembled and cost the Allies nearly twice as many casualties as D-Day.

In this compelling work of history, Ryan narrates the Allied effort to end the war in Europe in 1944 by dropping the combined airborne forces of the American and British armies behind German lines to capture the crucial bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem. Focusing on a vast cast of characters -- from Dutch civilians to British and American strategists to common soldiers and commanders -- Ryan brings to life one of the most daring and ill-fated operations of the war. A Bridge Too Far superbly recreates the terror and suspense, the heroism and tragedy of this epic operation, which ended in bitter defeat for the Allies.

On the narrow corridor that would carry the armored drive, there were five major bridges to take. They had to be seized intact by airborne assault. It was the fifth, the crucial bridge over the Lower Rhine at a place called Arnhem, sixty-four miles behind the German lines, that worried Lieutenant General Frederick Browning, Deputy Commander, First Allied Airborne Army. Pointing to the Arnhem bridge on the map he asked, "How long will it take the armor to reach us?" Field Marshal Montgomery replied briskly, "Two days," Still looking at the map, Browning said, "We can hold it for four." Then he added, "But, sir, I think we might be going a bridge too far."