Trains of Thought : Paris to Omaha Beach, Memories of a Wartime Youth

Rating:
Summary: Staggering and illuminating
Review: Books, education, thinking, and even history itself, have been collectively buried under. There is too much undifferentiated mush, a constant rush of gabbing plenty at the beleaguered individual. From under the rubble comes Victor Brombert's valiant memoir, a classic of pinpoint remembrance, a fully humane celebration of the potency of, well, something or other. For "Trains of Thought" is profoundly self-deprecating, a miraculous occurence for a fully vested professor of the highest rank. Brombert's magisterial touch with the very act of writing brings the proper lighting to every cinematic scene. "Trains of Thought" is a gift to succeeding generations, to the remaining intelligentsia, and to states whose recent horrid past is so little understood. Scholarly work on World War II, filling ocean tankers by now, cannot approach the vivid yet conflicted remembrances of a participant/onlooker. Surely there is an element of delusion in Brombert's infatuation with the representations of high culture as they apply to immense political events, but all human affairs are conducted with such vainglorious positionings. This is a towering memoir, in a almost literal sense - humanity has the chance, through this book, to look down upon the events of those times, and see what it couldn't see before: itself. Families. Schools. Boys and girls. Social events. Mass political insanity. Fathers and mothers. Death. Survival.

Rating:
Summary: A Train Wreck
Review: How could a book writen by a good writer and a interesting man, with great subjects, books, history, education, ever be so boring? If this is what memoirs have come down to they need to be outlawed. I understand that writing about oneself is difficult indeed, and very few have pulled it off, but this is brutal. This gets my worse book of the year award. 0 stars