Rating: 
Summary: This is a wretched book!
Review: Travel commentaries are great, usually, and this one was a great idea as he started out to honor his grandfathers who fought in WWI. However, instead of honoring history he ended up maligning his grandfather's generation. This is no history! This is just uncontrollable anger. I have never in my life found one who doesn't have a good word for Sergeant Alvin York but O'Shea can't find even one. But ... soldiers have fought and died for centuries so that O'Shea can write whatever he wants.I, for one, don't even want his book on my shelf. If anybody wants my copy, let me know.
Rating:
Summary: A smug and arrogant book
Review: Well Mr. O'shea managed to punch all my buttons. I am currently serving in the U.S. Army and have been for the past seven years so I'm a fool and an idiot. I majored in history at Boise State University so I'm a geek and my father is from Tennessee which is where Sgt Alvin York hails from which must make me a yokel by association. This man is a product of a wealthy and mostly free society. The rights and privliges he enjoys is partially due to the blood that so many others lost in all our past wars, but he dosen't seem to understand that. He is a pacificst and in my opinion that makes him a moral coward - I've never had any respect for a philosophy which values the individual maintaining their moral purity while others around them are being struck down. The pacificst is a smug and arrogant person who believes that they are superior to others because they know better. The rest are at best misguided or in Mr. O'Sheas case pawns and tools. Contrary to what the reviewer from Manitoba might think I am not a gung-ho Yank. I think that war is an activity best avoided and I'm leaving the army in part because I no longer wish to serve in an organization which ultimately views my life as expendable, but I do not sneer at those who will continue to wear the uniform. Mr. O'Sheas attitude has the sound of a man who is slightly ashamed at having never done what his grandfathers did - despite his personal beliefs. Now Mr. O'Sheas knowledge of WW1 is lacking to put it mildly. He relies on cliches and conventionally held ideas about the war. It is apparent that he is about as well informed as the average American high-school student. Yes WW1 was a horrific event and there was much stupidity on both sides but Mr. O'Shea has never looked at the issue in depth. Anger is understandable-I often have felt the same way,but does he honestly believe such shallow and cardboard ideas? No what Mr. O'Shea has done is write a piece of left-wing proerganda and not a very good one at that.I can only be grateful that I signed out this book from my local library and didn't purchase it thus adding to his bank account or does he hold money in such small regard as well? Something tells me he dosen't.
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