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The Last of the Doughboys

the Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War
Nov 13, 2017RescueDog rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I loved this book. It was written in a folksy manner, as though you were having dinner with the author while he told you about his project to interview any remaining WWI veterans he could find. The reader did a great job of finding the right tone to read with & I was happy with the accents he used when he speaks the words of the veterans. Accents were subtle & natural. As well as relating what was learned in the interviews, there is a tremendous amount of info about The Great War included. It helps understand their stories & generally sets the scene for what was going on in the U. S. While the rest of the world seemed bent on self destruction. I can’t imagine how much time & effort went into researching this book! Not to mention the effort to find these veterans, determine whether they were still living & whether or not they were still lucid when he found them. It would have been interesting to have included vets from around the world as well, but he didn’t begin this project until 2003. That’s 85 years after the war ended. These survivors all had to be over 100 years old. There just wasn’t enough time to search in other countries. I didn’t figure out what method was used to determine the order of the stories. It seemed somewhat chronological, but also skipped around a lot. I’m very familiar with WWI, so that didn’t bother me. But, I would recommend beginning with the excellent Hourly History for WWI if you aren’t already a WWI buff.