Sicily '43 by James Holland is a historical narration of the Sicily invasion during World War II covering a few months before to when the Axis finally retreated off the island, though more material towards the beginning than towards the end. Holland uses a lot of interviews and diaries written at the time to also tell the personal experiences of a couple of dozen people, mostly soldiers on both sides, during the invasion.

There are a good number of maps at the beginning so you can follow the action. The maps are both theatre-wide and some closeups of a few key battles detailed in the book. For the most part I didn't use the maps as the text is fairly good at placing units and describing where they are enough that I could picture it in my mind.

I haven't read any books on the Sicily campaign. This feels like a fairly good book with a good narrative but it is a narrative book so nuts and bolts details are there for highlight battles but not otherwise. For me a good followup book would be something that focuses on the tactical details of the actual invasion day.

My only real retraction is how often he apologize for Montgomery and criticizes Patton. He also apologizes for the whole upper level command (Alexander was in overall command of the campaign). I don't know the critiques about the Sicily campaign so it seems odd to me and especially for Montgomery and Patton it gets a bit annoying as it comes up often. Eventually I had to look it up and he's English so I guess that explains the slant.

Still, I did find the book interesting and a good read with an interesting mix of high level view and low level man-on-the-ground anecdotes.