Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The French cannot forget the First World War; and they will not forget that America an ocean away, with no stake in it stepped in and turned the tide for the Allies. As Americans forgot what their own forebears did Over There, the French have become the keepers of that cache of American memory.
An eccentric, first person travelogue in the tradition of Tony Horwitz s Confederates in the Attic, Back Over There is a fascinating trip through an important, but relatively underemphasized chapter of American history, as well as an exploration of human memory between generations.
Moving chronologically along the path of American WWI battles, Rubin takes us through vast cemeteries, abandoned trenches, trees still filled with bullets and shrapnel, lush farmland, skeleton towns bombed to the ground and never rebuilt, and mines illuminated with the graffiti of soldiers long dead. Rubin introduces us to the lively characters still occupying these places, for whom the bloody conflict is not the distant past but a history that is immediate and ever present.
Based on his wildly popular New York Times series exploring WWI American battle sites in Northern France and the centennial of America s entrance into the war, Back Over There will be a journey through a place where American history lives on vividly and where the present and past have never quite separated.
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Synopsis
In The Last of the Doughboys, Richard Rubin introduced readers to a forgotten generation of Americans: the men and women who fought and won the First World War. Interviewing the war's last survivors face-to-face, he knew well the importance of being present if you want to get the real story. But he soon came to realize that to get the whole story, he had to go Over There, too. So he did, and discovered that while most Americans regard that war as dead and gone, to the French, who still live among its ruins and memories, it remains very much alive.
Years later, with the centennial of the war only magnifying this paradox, Rubin decided to go back Over There to see if he could, at last, resolve it. For months he followed the trail of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front, finding trenches, tunnels, bunkers, century-old graffiti and ubiquitous artifacts. But he also found an abiding fondness for America and Americans, and a colorful corps of local after-hours historians and archeologists who tirelessly explore these sites and preserve the memories they embody while patiently waiting for Americans to return and reclaim their own history and heritage. None of whom seemed to mind that his French needed work.
Based on his wildly popular New York Times series, Back Over There is a timely journey, in turns reverent and iconoclastic but always fascinating, through a place where the past and present are never really separated.
Synopsis
Based on Richard Rubin's wildly popular New York Times series, Back Over There is a timely journey, in turns reverent and iconoclastic but always fascinating, through a place where the past and present are never really separated.
In The Last of the Doughboys, Richard Rubin introduced readers to a forgotten generation of Americans: the men and women who fought and won the First World War. Interviewing the war's last survivors face-to-face, he knew well the importance of being present if you want to get the real story. But he soon came to realize that to get the whole story, he had to go Over There, too. So he did, and discovered that while most Americans regard that war as dead and gone, to the French, who still live among its ruins and memories, it remains very much alive.
Years later, with the centennial of the war only magnifying this paradox, Rubin decided to go back Over There to see if he could, at last, resolve it. For months he followed the trail of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front, finding trenches, tunnels, bunkers, century-old graffiti and ubiquitous artifacts. But he also found an abiding fondness for America and Americans, and a colorful corps of local after-hours historians and archeologists who tirelessly explore these sites and preserve the memories they embody while patiently waiting for Americans to return and reclaim their own history and heritage. None of whom seemed to mind that his French needed work.