We Hate and Love this Book

This book that is:

That is Americans All, the Story of the Rainbow Division in the Great War, the official history of the division published in 1936.

That's the division with the fighting 69th, rechristened the 165th Infantry, Father Duffy, Joyce Kilmer and Wild Bill Donovan.

That's the Division with Douglas MacArthur.

Look at the book. It is like 800 pages, handsomely bound with bass reliefs of all the Rainbow's subordinate units. Look at that Rainbow. My four year old loves it. The book has some fancy, heavy stock paper meant to last centuries, and while the binding is shot, the actual pages are in fine shape.

As far as content goes, the author gives us a decent narrative of the Rainbow's activities and actions, from formation to decommission. He also gives us tens of thousands of words of personal accounts of all the Rainbow's fighting. The defense of the Marne, the Croix de Rouge farm and the Ourcq, Cote de Chattilon, the race to Sedan...its all there.

However this book is badly organized with those accounts just thrown up seemingly at random, so one has to sift through dozens of pages to find a simple paragraph about the 168th Iowa storming Hill 212.

In short this book is a mess.

Still fun, though.