I was really looking forward to sitting down and reading this book, after all according to the title I would get an insight into what life was like for the French, in particular Parisians during World War One. What I actually found between the pages was more a memoir written by the Author of their search for his Grandfather during the war.

Questions I wanted to know such as the Parisians reaction to a war raging so close to their city was not covered and, although the journey of discovery the Author writes about was marginally interesting, not enough was in it to stop me asking myself what this had to do with not only Paris, but the way it reacted to the Great War.

This book turned out to be a great disappointment as I was hoping for more of a social history of Paris, a city I greatly love and another perspective on the attitudes of the people that lived here and in this time. Each time the reader comes close to Paris it seems as if the Author decides to take the left fork in the road instead of following the path into the city, so readers may not find this irritating but for me it was a major peeve, and was one of the reasons this book only receives a 2 thumbs rating.

If the is book had been listed as a memoir the disappointment I felt in it would not have been so great and, it would probably have received a higher rating. If this book were re-categorized into the memoir genre, I feel it would reach a wider more satisfied reading audience than it currently does.

I would recommend this book to those who enjoy memoirs, but I highly doubt I will read anything else by this Author.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/09/22/review-paris-at-the-end-of-the-world-how-t...





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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I was excited to see this book in the Goodreads giveaways and entered to win it. I have reviewed plenty of books on WWI along with undergraduate and graduate studies of the war. One thing that is rarely covered is the civilian impact of the war. Paris was in range of the German guns and aerial bombings. It was not captured as in WWII but stood at the edge of the the fighting. How did Parisians react to the war? Were there large volunteer efforts making field dressings? Did the population maintain a wartime footing in industry? Did the people sacrifice? Were there fears?

Unfortunately, these questions aren't answered or answered well in the book. While not a hard history of the war, there is information on the war. What the books seems to cover is the author's grandfather who was part of the Australian Imperial Force. The book is rather light as a war history and a history of wartime Paris. It is a good read for those who want to learn something about the war without a detailed, structured history. It is also a nice tribute to the author's grandfather. ( )

I was really looking forward to sitting down and reading this book, after all according to the title I would get an insight into what life was like for the French, in particular Parisians during World War One. What I actually found between the pages was more a memoir written by the Author of their search for his Grandfather during the war.

Questions I wanted to know such as the Parisians reaction to a war raging so close to their city was not covered and, although the journey of discovery the Author writes about was marginally interesting, not enough was in it to stop me asking myself what this had to do with not only Paris, but the way it reacted to the Great War.

This book turned out to be a great disappointment as I was hoping for more of a social history of Paris, a city I greatly love and another perspective on the attitudes of the people that lived here and in this time. Each time the reader comes close to Paris it seems as if the Author decides to take the left fork in the road instead of following the path into the city, so readers may not find this irritating but for me it was a major peeve, and was one of the reasons this book only receives a 2 thumbs rating.

If the is book had been listed as a memoir the disappointment I felt in it would not have been so great and, it would probably have received a higher rating. If this book were re-categorized into the memoir genre, I feel it would reach a wider more satisfied reading audience than it currently does.

I would recommend this book to those who enjoy memoirs, but I highly doubt I will read anything else by this Author.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/09/22/review-paris-at-the-end-of-the-world-how-t...





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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What begins as a spirited look at Paris in 1914 becomes a cul-de-sac of sorts: the reader is teased into following a story about the author's grandfather that goes nowhere, More irritating is Baxter's dismissiveness of the French artists and magazine writers when they portrayed the Germans army as a savage force ravaging Belgium and other nations. What were they supposed to do? This Monday-morning quarterbacking put me off, as did the descriptions of what went on in Parisian brothels: Baxter seems to get a thrill in describing some pretty indescribable fetishes. This is one of those books that, if someone took it away from you and you had a paragraph left, you'd shrug and pick up something else to read. ( )

Interesting stories from Paris in WWI, but rather disjointed. It was difficult to tell if the point of the book was to follow the path of his Australian grandfather in the war (which was not much of a path), or to discuss Paris during the war, or to recount the war experiences of Jean Cocteau. Each chapter made a good story, but there was little to connect it to the other stories. ( )