Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitlers Eagles Nest

As gripping as any novel, World War II historian Ambrose tells the horrifying, hallucinatory saga of Easy Company, whose 147 members he calls the nonpareil combat paratroopers on earth circa 1941-45. Stephen Speilberg has produced the upcoming TV mini-series in the fall.

As good a rifle company as any in the world, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, kept getting the tough assignments — responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitlers Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden. In “Band of Brothers,” Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze, and died, a company that took 150 percent casualties and considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers journals and letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the mens own words, of these American heroes.