The Rising Tide was published by Ballantine Books in 2006, the first volume of Shaara’s World War II European Theater trilogy. The novel covers the period from Operation Torch (the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942) through the conquest of Sicily in August 1943 — the campaigns that transformed the Western Allies from untested forces into armies capable of invading mainland Europe.
The primary perspectives are Dwight Eisenhower (learning the political complexities of coalition command while managing rivalries between Montgomery, Patton, and his other generals), Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox in his final North African campaigns, increasingly frustrated by Hitler’s interference and insufficient supplies), and Sergeant Jesse Logan (a fictional composite representing the infantry experience — the view from the ground where strategy becomes survival).
Shaara’s treatment of North Africa captures what is often sanitized in popular memory: the Allies’ first engagement with German forces at Kasserine Pass was a humiliating defeat, the American army was poorly trained and badly led at the tactical level, and the transformation into an effective fighting force required the brutal Darwinian process of combat itself. Eisenhower’s achievement was not military brilliance but organizational genius — forging a multinational coalition into a functioning instrument despite the personal and national rivalries that constantly threatened to tear it apart.
Collecting The Rising Tide
First edition (Ballantine Books, New York, 2006): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $8–$15
- Signed first edition: $20–$50