Deborah Cohen (1) (1968–)

I really did want to like this book so much more than I did. It's a period I find fascinating and these were people I did not know much or anything about but it was a bit of a mishmash. I think part of the problem was trying to cover too many people with sufficient depth but also how the coverage went. The main focus is the American newspaper correspondents covering Europe in the 20s and 30s leading up to WWII, mainly focused on Jimmy Sheehan and John Gunther but also pulling in many others in their orbit. The work they did is fascinating but much of the source material appears to be personal letters and there just ended up way too much gossip and navel gazing for my taste. None of them really come off well, esp. Frances Gunther, who just could not have been a hopelessly neurotic as she ends up looking. There were interesting parts of the news coverage and very touching personal moments but it needed a really severe editing job.… (altro)

This is a super book that focuses on the personal and professional lives of the most famous men and women foreign correspondents of the period between the wars - John and Frances Gunther, HR Knickerbocker, Jimmy Sheehan, Dorothy Thompson and their varied circles in the USA and UK and Europe. We also see them venturing to North Africa, India and China.

Here is a tidbit: Emily "Mickey" Hahn reported from Shanghai which was the fifth largest city in the world. In 1935 when she arrived, the police there recorded removing 29,000 corpses of people who had starved to death.

This group of writers were, for the most part, strongly against fascism, in particular because it submerged the individual in the politics of the movement. The stories filed by these bold journos were the first to warn against Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler.

Dorothy Thompson wrote that it wasn't just the Nazi assault on minorities, it was that the fascists wanted to eliminate individuality itself. (p284)

Their positions on communism were more mixed, as was common in the era. Their praise for the excellent idea of progress through common effort and their witness to the rapid strides the USSR made in modernization gave way to increasing dismay at Stalin's crimes.

Deborah Cohen is a skilled historian and writer who brings us into the barrooms, households and bedrooms of her subjects. Frank but not prurient. The cast of characters is huge and readers who won't be reading straight through might need to refer to the index to keep everyone straight.

After the war and Nuremburg, the wartime urgency and drive trickles away. New reporters and new political realities take over and these older correspondents start to retire from the public arena. They write books and are the subject of books, and serve largely as role models for the new reporters who will take the lessons learned into the Vietnam war era.

I found the book thrilling and recommend it highly.

For an excellent longer take on this book, the New Yorker review by Krithika Varagur,
March 17, 2022 is online.… (altro)

This is a fascinating view of the history of the 20th Century through the eyes of American newspaper correspondents. Not only do they travel trough Europe as the dictators are coming to power, strengthen their regimes and prepare to fight WW II. Most of them also traveled to the Middle East and India with Frances Gunther forming a close relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru and debating Gandhi.

If you enjoy gossip, this may be the volume for you. The men and women discussed here were all heavy drinkers and sharing one another in the bedroom. One extremely sad story included is about the Gunthers' son Johnny who developed brain cancer in his early teens and eventually died which John Gunther chronicled in his book, "Death Be Not Proud".

Correspondents included are the Gunthers, H. R. Nickerkerbocker, Dorothy Thompson and James Sheean plus some of their famous connections such as Nehru, Harold Nicolson, William Shier, and Rebecca West.… (altro)