Authors on the level of Cornelius Ryan

I have read quite a few books on WW2 and must admit that 'A Bridge Too Far' by Cornelius Ryan is perhaps my favorite. I've gone ahead and ordered 'The Longest Day' and 'The Final Battle' by him as well.

I am wondering if there are any other Authors - with books still in print/available from Amazon - that are on the same sort of level as Cornelius Ryan?

 

By "same level" do you mean skill as a wordsmith, ability to tell a story, accuracy as a historian, Etc?

 

Yes - precisely. Other Authors who would rate right up there with CR.

 

Ryan is my favorite storyteller. As far as readability, Rick Atkinson's trilogy on the US Army's involvement in WW2 is hard to beat. A gentleman named Brian Perret has written several interesting histories; my favorite being "Tank Tracks to Rangoon", a study of British/Commonwealth armor usage during the campaign in Burma. Tameichi Hara produced a very readable memoir of the Japanese side of the naval war in the SW Pacific, "Japanese Destroyer Captain".

 

I found Shattered Sword to be quite readable. If you like personal accounts Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is hard to beat.
In a completely different vein I found Rudel's (auto?) biography to be very readable (he was an unrepentant Nazi though).

 

Anything by John Lundstrom or Barrett Tillman

 

Wendy Lower is an excellent historian and writer. She writes extensively on the Holocaust and is a good researcher. It's a tough subject but she weaves an interesting story.

Hitler's Furies
The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Eastern Galicia

 

Walter Lord is of the same generation and general style as Ryan, a popular historian who excelled at weaving personal accounts into a dramatic narrative. He is best known for A Night to Remember, the classic account of the sinking of the Titanic, but he wrote very good, readable books about Pearl Harbor (Day of Infamy), Midway (Miracle at Midway) and Dunkirk (The Miracle of Dunkirk). I wouldn't go to these for highly sophisticated historical or military analysis, but they are as accurate as Lord could make them when he was writing in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s and the personal accounts in them are wonderful. If you want to know what it was like to actually experience these battles, you will enjoy Lord's work.

 

IMHO, Edwin P. Hoyt and Eric Hammel are two quite readable authors. Although, both tend to focus on the Pacfic side of the war. I believe the majority of their works have stood the test of time.