VICTORY AT LAST

he end of the Second World War in Europe was celebrated in Britain on May 8, 1945. Winston Churchill, at Buckingham Palace, told an aide to get him a cigar, which he then lit before the crowd with a flourish. "They expect it," Churchill explained. The story is told by Rick Atkinson in The Guns at Last Light (Henry Holt), the final volume of the "Liberation Trilogy," his widely acclaimed history of the war in Europe. Atkinson, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has written books on four American wars. His first, The Long Gray Line (1989), followed the West Point class of 1966—ravaged like no other by Vietnam. The new book begins on D-day and ends on V-E Day. Epic, set-piece battle sequences are balanced by deft portraiture. The Greatest Generation is nearly gone. A hideous monument in Washington commemorates its deeds. The "Liberation Trilogy" is the monument it deserves.

CULLEN MURPHY