This autobiography is a translation from the original Dutch of Hubert Dielen's journal. It doesn't follow a specific Day/Date format but the writing reads like a journal and is chronological. It also reads like a travel guide to Germany in the mid to late 1850s and talks about government and the people who lived near the Dutch/German border during that time. Hubert Dielen was a butcher and the first couple of sections deal with his arrival at man-hood with included his looking for work in the various locals. He tells of the generosity of the people he met and how they offered him food when they couldn't offer him work. Dielen's life story continues through his military experience, his three wives and ten children, and the hardships of World War I. It gave me an insight to a time and place I had not studied,
It's not the easiest book to read as far as flow and I was constantly referring to an atlas to see where he was. If you are curious about Europe during that time period, it's well worth the read.