Rating: 
Summary: Exaustive subject treatise but arduous reading
Review: Charles B. MacDonald's presentation of the Battle of the Bulge is certainly a thorough journey. Mr. MacDonald had first hand experience having served in the US Army in the Ardennes, and you feel that in this work. He should be applauded for his completeness of subject, certainly this work accomplishes that. From a purely historical perspective this is a great piece of work, yet from the perspective of historical reading for pure pleasure this book fails horribly. Certainly the book has content but MacDonald has the ability to easily lose the train of thought, moving back and forth between American and German units within one apparent stream of thought, when in reality multiple trains of thought were intended. In some places (e.g., his discussion of the leaderships and their responses) the book reads extremely well, but in most the task of reading is exactly that - a TASK! On content I recommend this book, on pleasure I cannot. While John Toland ("Battle") gives praise to MacDonald's work as the basis of content, he did not praise it as a "good read" - I see why not. Trumpet's would be a great read together with Toland's "Battle"; Battle for pleasure, Trumpets for content!
Rating: 
Summary: Exceptional Detail
Review: Charles McDonald has created a wonderfully detailed, yet readable account of this epic World War II campaign--no small feat. The only criticism I would point out is his tendency to advance the account by battlefield sector rather than by pure chronology. For example, he would describe three days of action in the northern sector and then revert back to day one to cover action in the central sector. I found myself referring back to the maps in the previous sections to get an appreciation for what was happening in the other sectors. A pure chronological approach would have made it much easier to keep the status of the entire battlefield in focus. Nonetheless, 'A Time for Trumpets' is a 'must buy' for the military historian in general and the WW II buff in particular.
Rating: 
Summary: SUPERB !!!!!!!!
Review: FAR AND AWAY THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ ON THE BULGE. IT GIVES AN OVERALL ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE,IT'S ORIGINS PRIOR TO IT'S EXECUTION,AND THE AFTERMATH,FROM BOTH A STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL VIEW.MACDONALD OBVIOUSLY DID HIS RESEARCH WELL. FOR AN OVERALL ACCOUNT OF THE U.S ARMY IN ACTION IN WW II, THIS IS THE BOOK YOU MUST HAVE.
Rating:
Summary: SUPERB !!!!!!!!
Review: Granted, in "A Time for Trumpets" the late Charles MacDonald provides a comprehensive account of the battle. But he focuses far too much on troop movements (as opposed to the troops themselves) for my taste. The book starts off well with a look into the tactical minds of Adolf Hitler and his generals, but then the narrative turns into a bland procession of unit names and their geographic locations. Poor-quality maps offer little help to the reader dutifully trying to note each of these places. When the shooting starts, there are a few refreshing stories from the soldier's point of view, but these are quickly crushed under the weight of countless unit movements. Although this may be fascinating to a military scientist, the casual reader hoping to learn the thoughts and feelings of common soldiers at the Bulge will be sorely disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Exhaustive...but exhausting
Review: Granted, in "A Time for Trumpets" the late Charles MacDonald provides a comprehensive account of the battle. But he focuses far too much on troop movements (as opposed to the troops themselves) for my taste. The book starts off well with a look into the tactical minds of Adolf Hitler and his generals, but then the narrative turns into a bland procession of unit names and their geographic locations. Poor-quality maps offer little help to the reader dutifully trying to note each of these places. When the shooting starts, there are a few refreshing stories from the soldier's point of view, but these are quickly crushed under the weight of countless unit movements. Although this may be fascinating to a military scientist, the casual reader hoping to learn the thoughts and feelings of common soldiers at the Bulge will be sorely disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: I heard the Trumpets
Review: I think "A time For trumpets" is the most accurate and complete history of the Battle of The bulge that has been written. Charles B. Mcdonald was a great Historian. He was the youngest Captain of Infantry. a company commander at the age of 22. His account of the Battle of the bulge for television was a masterpiece, as was his book. Charles is dead now and the United States has lost a great soldier and a wonderful Historian.
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Summary: Battle of the Bulge comes to life in this book's pages......
Review: On December 16, 1944, elements of four German armies -- 14 infantry and five panzer divisions in all -- attacked part of the American First Army along an 80-mile front along Germany's border with Belgium and Luxembourg. The sudden and unexpected counteroffensive hit the Americans in an area the Allies thought would be a nice, quiet sector for combat-weary divisions to rest and refit while green divisions fresh from the States could be acclimated to life on the line: the dark and deep forests of the Ardennes. Planned and ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, this massive onslaught was launched with one objective in mind: penetrate the American lines, pass through the "impassable" Ardennes Forest, cross the Meuse River, and capture the vital port of Antwerp. At the very least, the Allied supply situation would deteriorate enough to slow the Anglo-American advance to the Reich's industrial heartland by a matter of months and buy time for Hitler and his tottering empire. At the very best, a German victory would split the Grand Alliance in three, trap the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group on the northern sector of the front, and the Fuhrer could attempt to convince the Soviets that further fighting was useless now that the Western Allies had been defeated at the Reich's very doorstep.For a few snowy, foggy, and bitterly cold days, things seemed to be going Hitler's way. Caught off-guard by the sheer size of the counteroffensive, hampered by bad weather which prevented Allied air power to provide ground support to the tankers and infantrymen along the front, confused and misdirected by a small number of English-speaking German commandos wearing American uniforms, and, at some points along the 80-mile "Ghost Front," isolated, outnumbered, and forced to surrender, GIs fought a seemingly losing battle against hundreds of thousands of German soldiers. But even when some units panicked or were overrun, many American soldiers -- sometimes in dribs and drabs -- stood fast and delayed the enemy, giving Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander, and his generals valuable time to plan a riposte and turn what seemed to be a disaster into a strategic opportunity. And sure enough, after a month's of heavy fighting in the awful cold of a European winter, the German counteroffensive was slowed, halted, and gradually pushed back to where it had started. The late Charles B. MacDonald, one of America's premier military historians and himself a company commander in the Ardennes campaign, captures the chaos, misery, bravery, and drama of the U.S. Army's largest battle in history in A Time For Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge. The author of such acclaimed works as Company Commander and The Mighty Endeavor, MacDonald uses his skills as a writer and his knowledge of the infantryman's combat experiences to paint a vivid picture of Hitler's last gamble to gain even a temporary victory in the West and the efforts of over 600,000 U.S. and several thousand British troops to contain the salient or "bulge" that gave the Ardennes counteroffensive its popular moniker. A Time for Trumpets not only covers the well-known episodes of the small teams of German soldiers wearing American uniforms (they actually did very little material damage, but their very existence caused jumpy GI's to quiz each other about baseball teams, state capitals, even popular singers and bandleaders), the heroic stand of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne and the infamous Malmedy massacre, but delves into the Allies' biggest intelligence failure of the war and the bitter recrimination between British and American commanders when Eisenhower placed the northern half of the "bulge" under the command of Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery. Attention to detail is also given to the German high command's reluctance to execute Hitler's plan by the letter, knowing in their professional soldiers' hearts and minds that the Nazi dictator was overreaching. Despite the complexity of the battle, A Time For Trumpets is highly readable and engrossing. There are helpful maps and many pages of photos to help the casual reader keep his or her bearings in this sprawling month-long battle, and the various appendices are valuable tools that illustrate the composition of a standard U.S. infantry regiment and the various Orders of Battle for the Allied and German forces engaged in the Battle of the Bulge.
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Summary: A Superb Field-Level Description Of The Battle Of the Bulge!
Review: One of the most impressive aspects of Charles B. MacDonald's terrific book on the Battle of the Bulge is the fact that it so vividly and accurately addresses each sector of the battle cohesively and coherently, without confusing the reader with a jumble of confusing different events at a particular time so that one is unable to thread together what was happening along a timeline in a specific place without undue difficulty. This said, it's also the only criticism I have of what's otherwise a wonderful, well-written, exciting, and thoroughly researched work. Although this may sound contradictory, it really is not. Unlike "Battle" by John Toland or "Citizen Soldiers" by Stephen Ambrose, one sometimes loses the overall perspective these books provide in concentrating on a particular location without understanding other concurrent events and activities. SO, while I enjoyed the fact that his approach allows greater understanding of particular events in their entirety, I was occasionally frustrated in trying to figure out (without flipping through other sections) what was also going on at the time. I hasten to add that this is an unavoidable situation; one can't have it both ways at once. So while it does detract slightly from the book's overall account of the Battle of the Bulge in total, I appreciate and love the final work the author has given us. Therefore I want to emphasize what a unique book this is, and what an outstanding job MacDonald has done in depicting the on-the scene descriptions of various units in action. Of course, given the fact that he was a field commander on the scene as the battle progressed, he indeed has a unique contribution to offer in way of eye-witness testimony as well as wonderful natural access to others who were there as well. He uses these resources along with a gripping ability to tell the story in a well-written and entertaining way that makes the book unforgettable. Using "A Time For Trumpets" along with Toland's "Battle", Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers", and John Eisenhower's "The Bitter Woods", the serious reader can much better appreciate and understand, at almost every level, how the madness of that several week period unfolded in mid-December 1944 during the worst winter weather of some fifty years in Europe. Hitler's strike with 1400 tanks and over a quarter million troops into the heart of the Ardennes at the Allies single weakest point came with complete surprise, and stunned, re-awakened and alarmed an overconfident, over-extended, and under-supported Allied command structure who thought they already had practically whipped the German Wehrmacht into submission. This is a terrific book and a wonderfully written and documented work of modern war history, and I recommend it to anyone who really wants to understand what unfolded in those fateful weeks in France.
Rating:
Summary: A definitive account of the battle
Review: Second World War Company Commander Charles B. MacDonald's book is a painstaking recreation of Hitler's Ardennes Offensive. MacDonald's personal experiences during the Battle, as well as his detailed research and interviews, adds another dimension to this book which first landed on booksellers' shelves in the mid 1980's. About the only shortcoming are that the maps contained in the book are a bit too infrequent and a reader would likely need to keep a separate and detailed scaled map of the Ardennes nearby in order to keep track of the action.
Rating:
Summary: A Time for Trumpets
Review: This book encompasses the Battle of the Bulge from high command down to the lowest ranking private and their experiences throughout Nazi Germany's final big offensive. It is a very insightful book, though scattered and at times hard to follow due to shifts in time-line. Overall a very good book and I'd recommend this to anyone looking to view this campaign from a different light.
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