Overwritten Observations, Personal Thoughts, Some History, Where Horwitz used a journey through the old Confederacy to explore the grip of the Civil War on today's South (in a very poingnant and witty way), O'Shea uses his trip to to display gratuitous vocabulary, overwritten place and setting descriptions and his world view on topics that sometimes pop into his head. Most annoying are his swipes at his personal collection of people and places that obviously fail to embrace his world view (such as a slap at Lynchburg, VA that appears, unconnected in the middle of one passage). His excesses are distracting -- in short the author inserts much too much of himself in a book that would have been better if it had focused more on what the front is like today and what impact it still had on those who live along it.
Some interesting historic nuggets and vingettes do appear in the book and they are sometimes fascinating. The Great War still has the power to move with its farce and tradgedy. The book should have focused more on this aspect.
Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I
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