Biggest Brother: The Life Of Major Dick Winters, The Man Who Led The Band of Brothers by Larry Alexander

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Published by NAL Hardcover in 2005
320 pages

An enjoyable memoir of Dick Winters' life, mostly focusing on his time in the military. Dick Winters is one of the main focuses of the splendid HBO biographical mini-series Band of Brothers and the Stephen Ambrose book by the same name. Throughout, Winters gives open and honest assessments of fellow officers and soldiers, and training levels of replacements soldiers and Korean War soldiers.

Dick Winters (1918-2011)

I have not yet read Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers, but am a giant fan of the mini-series. Dick Winters re-tells this story with the focus on his own experiences. The Nixon-Winters and Stobel-Winters relationships are explored a bit more in-depth than are presented in the TV program.

The pacing of the non-military aspects of his life is generally very good, with the exception of one page early that goes into too much detail about his family background. This reflects the fact that the author is also a Pennsylvanian who is from the same area that Winters grew up in. Those family connections mean something to locals, but I skimmed it and hoped that the rest of the book wasn't going to be like that one. It was not and the rest of the book was really quite good.

A must for World War II devotees and recommended reading for fans of Band of Brothers.

I rate this biography 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, The Man Who Led the Band of Brothers.

Reviewed on January 6, 2008.