Kenneth Goldman's father, Lt. Robert W. Goldman, USNR, was aboard ship for five of her six battle operations. As a junior officer (he eventually became the ship's navigator), he held a high security clearance and saved a large portion of the documents to which he was privy. These invasion maps, photographs, ship's plans of the day, convoy position orders, enemy force assessments, and more form the backbone of Attack Transport.

Yet Goldman graciously keeps his father out of center stage in telling the "life" of a ship that participated in almost all of the major U.S. amphibious assaults in the European Theater. Using weathered diaries and letters from other crew members, along with their memories of service, he captures the humor, boredom, combat fears, and capers on liberty that give this view from the lower deck a charm that operational histories do not have.