Rick Atkinson 2008
AmericaŴs greatest living chronicler of men at war, Rick Atkinson draws on an intimate knowledge of the soldierŴs life. The son of a career army officer, he was born in Germany and grew up on military posts. He developed his mastery of researchŮalong with his powerful prose style and keen eye for the telling detailŮas a reporter for The Kansas City Times and The Washington Post. His reporting on the 1991 conflict with Iraq resulted in the book Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. Atkinson accompanied General David Petraeus and the 101st Airborne as an embedded reporter in the first months of the Iraq war. He distilled these experiences in the book In the Company of Soldiers, hailed as the most vivid depiction yet written of the day-to-day experience of combat soldiers in Iraq. Between assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq, Atkinson is writing an exhaustively researched history of the U.S. armed forces in the European theater of World War II. The first volume, An Army at Dawn, received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for History. In this podcast, recorded at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, Atkinson touches on his experiences as a war correspondent in Iraq, as well as his multi-volume history of the European front in World War II.