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Reviews
The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War by Richard Rubin
julianh's review
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Death, and War
Moderate: Xenophobia, Death of parent, Pandemic/Epidemic, Antisemitism, Racism, and Racial slurs
Minor: Sexism and Suicide
thebonski98's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
theangrylawngnome's review
4.0
Overdrive audiobook ISBN is 9781483073576, not shown on GoodReads.
Cover is different as well.
Cover is different as well.
mlscribe's review
4.0
Love the core concept of this book and would recommend it, but an editor should have stepped in to ax the chapter about WWI sheet music. It's irrelevant to the narrative and it's not like the book needs to be any longer.
toggle_fow's review
4.0
This was a great book.
It's not the type of account of WWI that really gives you a vision of the whole war. It's much more personal.
The author spent years in the early 2000s tracking down still-living WWI veterans (who were by that time well over a hundred years old) and interviewing them on their lives in general, and their experience with the war in particular. The combination of so many accounts and the author's background research serve as windows into tiny bits of the whole picture -- the War As I Knew It.
So really, it's like sitting down with your great-great grandfather and getting to hear what he has to say, with a handy historical guide and fact-checker there providing all the fill-in context. But probably more in-depth and honest, because in my experience great-great grandfathers typically aren't incredibly forthcoming with their descendants when it comes to wars.
The only downside to this whole book was that it solely focuses on Americans (and an accidental Canadian). There is something to be said, I think, for the way the author defends the impact US troops had on the outcome of WWI, but the fact remains that they arrived just in time to close the curtain on the conflict. It had to be an altogether different experience for them than it did for the majority of those who fought, but I don't speak French or German, so I'll take what I can get.
It's not the type of account of WWI that really gives you a vision of the whole war. It's much more personal.
The author spent years in the early 2000s tracking down still-living WWI veterans (who were by that time well over a hundred years old) and interviewing them on their lives in general, and their experience with the war in particular. The combination of so many accounts and the author's background research serve as windows into tiny bits of the whole picture -- the War As I Knew It.
So really, it's like sitting down with your great-great grandfather and getting to hear what he has to say, with a handy historical guide and fact-checker there providing all the fill-in context. But probably more in-depth and honest, because in my experience great-great grandfathers typically aren't incredibly forthcoming with their descendants when it comes to wars.
The only downside to this whole book was that it solely focuses on Americans (and an accidental Canadian). There is something to be said, I think, for the way the author defends the impact US troops had on the outcome of WWI, but the fact remains that they arrived just in time to close the curtain on the conflict. It had to be an altogether different experience for them than it did for the majority of those who fought, but I don't speak French or German, so I'll take what I can get.
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