This definitive account of the Gulf War relates the previously untold story of the U.S. war with Iraq in the early 1990s. The author follows the 42-day war from the first night to the final day, providing vivid accounts of bombing runs, White House strategy sessions, firefights, and bitter internal conflicts.

Rick Atkinson won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for a series of articles on West Point's Class of 1966, which later became the basis for his best-selling book The Long Gray Line. A veteran staff reporter for the Washington Post, he wrote the Post's lead stories during the Gulf War.

"Exhaustive, albeit consistently absorbing, record of the 42- day Gulf War that offers fresh, often startling, perspectives on the planning and conduct of what the author characterizes as ``a brilliant slaughter.'' Focusing almost entirely on military operations, Pulitzer- winning Washington Post correspondent Atkinson (The Long Gray Line, 1989) provides a chronological account of how the US-led coalition liberated Kuwait." Kirkus Reviews