From July 10, 1943, to May 8, 1945, America's 157th Regimental
Combat Team carved a long, bloody arc across Europe, burying
1,449 of its own in Sicily, southern Italy, Anzio, southern
France, the Rhineland and Germany. One of the 157th's standouts
is the subject of Alex Kershaw's exceptional "The Liberator":
Felix Sparks, who rose from a Depression-era Army private to the
regiment's lieutenant colonel. Born in 1917, Sparks hailed from
Miami, Ariz., a parched boom town whose copper mines were
stilled by the Depression. As a youth, he hunted quail and
rabbits to help feed his family and sought refuge at the local
library, where he read books about the Indian Wars and the
Alamo; in the summer, he applied his love of military history by
drilling in the Citizens Military Training Program. By Alex
Kershaw Crown, 433 pages, $28 Unable to find work when he
graduated from high school in 1935, Sparks struck out on his own
with $18 in his pocket, riding the rails throughout the West
until he found himself in San Francis