Alexander Seifert's Reviews > Taking Paris: The Epic Battle for the City of Lights

Taking Paris is a pseudo-historical book that details a few slices of the history surrounding the surrender and eventual recapture of the French capital of Paris during the years of the Second World War. The book is authored by Martin Dugard of ‘I do the research and writing for Bill O’Reilly’ fame. With that said, I didn’t dislike the Killing Books, and I probably somewhat enjoyed them for being small, easily digestible looks at slices of American pop culture.

In ‘Taking Paris’, Dugard takes a similar approach to the books that he ‘co-authors’ with O’Reilly. The writing is relatively fast-paced, with a style that’s more fictional narrative than staunch historical writing. As someone who loves themselves a good ‘narrative history’, I can get behind this style, even if Dugard’s writing is more narrative than much else. After all, this man isn’t a historian. He’s a former business worker who dabbled in writing for magazines before transitioning into books with the aforementioned former news anchor. The fact that this book lists no resources and has no bibliography should tell you that this shouldn’t be taken as historical text but rather a narrative retelling inspired by documented events.

Now that I’ve satisfied the portion of my brain that recalls my days as a graduate student pursuing a history degree, I can safely inform you that I did enjoy this book. I enjoyed it for what it is: a light reading that provides an interesting ‘spin’ on historical events. Dugard highlights a number of people of varying importance, with some chapters highlighting smaller members of the Resistance while countless others do focus on major players like Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Rommel. As someone familiar with the history, it’s not much knew about the leaders, but I found some of the stories of the smaller bits and pieces of the Resistance and war effort to be pretty interesting, albeit many of them tragic in some way, shape, or form.

My only real ‘complaint’ with the book is that the actual ‘Taking Paris’ part feels relegated to the last ten percent of the book (it might be more or less than that, but by the time you reach this part, the book has already felt like it was trying to wrap up). The action between May and June of 1944 and June and August of that year is told very quickly. While I understand that Paris was essentially given up by the Nazis, it still feels more like this book is telling the story of ‘some world leaders and Resistance members operating during the time of Paris’ occupation’ rather than any real story centered in Paris. After all, Paris is visited less in this book that North Africa or London. In the afterword, Dugard mentions that originally the book was just going to be in 1944, and through his research, he extended it backwards to 1940. I’m curious what, if any, form that original book may have taken, given there’s only a dozen or so chapters directly pertaining to the retaking of Paris.

But again, despite this, the book’s a fine way to spend a few hours. It’s a nice way to ‘dip your toes’ into the events, but like many of these pop culture-esque books, it just left me wanting to find an actual historical text that details many of these events.