Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile Addition to the WWI Reading List
Review: O'Shea is understandably emotional and confused as he retells his unique journey. I found his musings added needed personal italics to this intelligently written travelogue. I recall my own trips to WWI battlefields and cemeteries, and the mixed feelings of awe, anger, pride and deep sadness that I experienced at each location. At the huge US cemetery in Romagne (St. Mihiel area) in 1976 I was the only visitor that day to the thousands of American dead lying there in this beautiful setting since Fall 1918. The French caretaker told me that "no one really comes here anymore -- only the locals to picnic". Did I feel the ghosts? You bet I did.
I liked this book
Rating: 
Summary: A biased waste of time
Review: O'Shea takes an opportunity to write a useful traveler's guide to the Western Front and completely blows it by spewing a volume of drivel that maligns anyone and everyone who ever wore a uniform. His pacifist leanings may have been tolerable if they had been left on the sidelines, but instead they pollute every page, preaching rather than informing.What can be gained by calling Sgt Alvin York a "yokel" and "hick"? By calling 1917's mass mutinies the French Army's "finest hour"? The answer is the same as what can be gained by reading this book - absolutely nothing. As a previous reviewer stated, the only part of this book that is worth the paper it is printed on, hence a generous two stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Two Journeys
Review: O'Shea's book is a fascinating read I frankly had trouble putting down. Often moving, often hilarious, sometimes downright scary, the author's narrative consistently drew me along with him toward Switzerland. And like other good travel narratives, there is more to his journey than famous sights. Along the way, O'Shea shakes off his boomer's disregard for History--note how he has less and less in common with his Parisian co-workers once he returns to the city--and confronts the origins of his family's deeply-held pacifism in the grave of a long-forgotten kinsman. How events shape us and those around us through time is one of the great lessons History should teach.
Rating:
Summary: Two Journeys
Review: O'Shea's book is a fascinating read I frankly had trouble putting down. Often moving, often hilarious, sometimes downright scary, the author's narrative consistently drew me along with him toward Switzerland. And like other good travel narratives, there is more to his journey than famous sights. Along the way, O'Shea shakes off his boomer's disregard for History--note how he has less and less in common with his Parisian co-workers once he returns to the city--and confronts the origins of his family's deeply-held pacifism in the grave of a long-forgotten kinsman. How events shape us and those around us through time is one of the great lessons History should teach.
Rating:
Summary: A great book on the 'Great War'
Review: O'Shea's book is nothing less than superb. Few novels are as moving, few histories as readable, and no guidebook as informative. Highly recommended! It is ironic that the first review at Amazon about this book, by 'Nugent', was the only negative one. What a shame if potential readers were put off by Nugent's irrational and utterly unjustified screed.
Rating: 
Summary: An ahistorical trek by an ugly Canadian
Review: Shea is neither a historian nor is his trip through the Western Front all that accidental. Shea is an anti-military, anti-war, anti-establishment Canadian who, for some strange reason (money?), decided to "visit" the Western Front.
Nothing he sees, be it the sites of one of the horrorific periods in modern history or the people he encounters along the way, can meet up to his exacting standards. Ypres, Loos, Vimy, the Somme, Verdun and other assorted stops on his trek revile him as they did me. But to O'Shea, the general officers who planned these slaughters are "criminal" and the soldiers "victims of lies." So what else is new? We have known that for years! Where has he been? Histories of WWI are replete with much more cogent accounts of the shortcomings, ignorance and whatever of the General Staff. To visit these sites as O'Shea does and simply mutter drivel about criminal actions and lies and inncocent lives does nothing to inform the reader.
When he meets the locals his "ugly Canadian" side really blossoms. After some poor service in Ploegstreet (spelling?) he concludes it to be the "Paris of Flanders." His bitching, carping criticisms continue. Bad meal at the hotel in Albert, dirty little farm towns, nasty farm dogs, and crazy border police. The French are beyond hope, the Belgians a bit slow, the Americans a naive, misguided race and the Germans pushy. No one is good enough for O'Shea. It makes one wonder why he just didn't stay home.
A tour of the Western Front is truly a moving experience. To walk a path that took so many to their deaths is a humbling experience and should NOT be taken as an invitation to snarl witty criticisms. The Front is at times depressing beyond belief (Verdun), immersed in sadness (Delville Wood) and defiant of modern understanding (the Ypre salient). What made men go through this? What brought us to this scene of madness? The Western Front is a shrine to a monumental miscalculation that changed our world forever. It deserves much better than O'Shea's bitching, moaning, complaining, condemning attitude.
He had a great opportunity to enlighten all of us. How do the locals view the Great War's continuing presence after 80 years? What must it be like to live in the corridor of invasion? How do the local communities view the sites? Are they a tourist draw? Do they mean anything to the current inhabitants? What about the busses of British school children? Are these relatively recent? Is WWI alive in the schools.
I remember encountering a lot of school tours (French, Belgian, British, and German) in the war museums. Modern Europe is still interested in these events - why? And, in the rebuilt town of Albert (destroyed in WWI), there is a memorial to the resistance victims of Nazis. Yet, Albert selected as a sister city a city in East Germany! There are contradictions galore and much local history to be revealed in connection to the Western Front. For example, cemetary vandalism has been a problem recently in the Ypre salient. Why?
It's too bad O'Shea didn't produce a work that would increase our knowledge of the Western Front at century's end. Such a work would be worth buying.
And please, Stephen, don't call yourself a historian.
Rating:
Summary: Back to the Front
Review: Stephen O'Shea has written a moving and beautiful book that captures perfectly the atmosphere of this tragic land. O'Shea makes no claim that he is an historian but his sense of humanity and compassion make this book worthy of a place alongside the finest of Great War historical studies
Rating:
Summary: back to the front: an accidental historian walks the trenche
Review: Stephen O'Shea is irritatingly self-rightous. O'Shea's historical references to the war and modern France were very jugdmental. I understand the book is a travel journal but, if you are going judge a major historical event such the WWI, one should not just scratch the surface of it.
Rating:
Summary: back to the front: an accidental historian walks the trenche
Review: Stephen O'Shea is irritatingly self-rightous. O'Shea's historical references to the war and modern France were very jugdmental. I understand the book is a travel journal but, if you are going judge a major historical event such the WWI, one should not just scratch the surface of it.
Rating:
Summary: Likable walking survey of the Great War
Review: The "armchair travel" is better than the history (which says nothing new) in this readable, appealing book, tho I agree with the other Amazon reviewers who side with O'Shea vs. the hawks. I visited some of the WWI sites in Europe & desperately wanted a book like this. Good to know future travelers will have one.
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