Overview
A Soldier’s Sketchbook, an illustrated memoir from a World War II soldier, is drawn from the letters, sketches, snapshots, and mementos of Pvt. Joseph Farris, who left his home of Danbury, Connecticut, and set off to war aboard the U.S.S. General Gordon in October 1944, bound for France as part of Company M, 398th Infantry. Farris wrote more than 800 letters home, and he hewed his artistic talents with sketches and paintings along the way. He also secretly copied officers’ notes and, once back home after the war, collected clippings and battlefield accounts, which form a sobering counterpoint to his reassurances to his parents that everything is “swell.” This book chronicles a young soldier’s experiences from October 1944 through January 1946 in France and Germany. In words and pictures, it tells of Christmas in the trenches, long walks through the rain and mud, landscapes of fear and despair, lost friends and leaders, changing beliefs about human nature, God, and the Jerries (as he calls the Germans). Snapshots and colour sketches, painted in moments of reprieve during battle and carried home by this earnest young man and fledgling artist, help us see the world he saw.
Full Product Details
Author: Joseph Farris
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Imprint: National Geographic Society
Dimensions:
Width: 21.00cm
, Height: 3.30cm
, Length: 26.20cm
Weight: 0.982kg
ISBN: 9781426208171
ISBN 10: 1426208170
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 01 November 2011
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: No Longer Our Product
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
A remarkable new book. -Newyorker.com (Book Bench blog)<br> <br> Farris, best known postwar as a cartoonist for the New Yorker, offers this evocative memoir-album, with a scrapbook graphic design. Replete with faux-yellowed pages, it chronicles his tour of duty using his contemporary illustrations, his letters to his Connecticut family, and present-day reflections on the attitudes and fears of his innocent 19-year-old self. With meticulous National Geographic maps tracking his regiment's advance through France and Germany, Ferris' is an honestly written, visually captivating volume and a superb addition to the genre of WWII artwork. - Booklist <br> <br> Members of the Greatest Generation will enjoy the postcard from the front ... an Everyman story told in letters, sketches, photographs and memorabilia, at once charming, naive and wise. Mysanantonio.com
"""A remarkable new book."" -Newyorker.com (Book Bench blog) ""Farris, best known postwar as a cartoonist for the New Yorker, offers this evocative memoir-album, with a scrapbook graphic design. Replete with faux-yellowed pages, it chronicles his tour of duty using his contemporary illustrations, his letters to his Connecticut family, and present-day reflections on the attitudes and fears of his innocent 19-year-old self. With meticulous National Geographic maps tracking his regiment's advance through France and Germany, Ferris' is an honestly written, visually captivating volume and a superb addition to the genre of WWII artwork."" -Booklist ""Members of the ""Greatest Generation"" will enjoy the postcard from the front ... an Everyman story told in letters, sketches, photographs and memorabilia, at once charming, na�ve and wise."" Mysanantonio.com"
Author Information
Joseph Farris is an internationally published illustrator whose cartoons have appeared in the New Yorker since 1971.
