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Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home Between the Wars
From a Harvard historian, this riveting portrait of four trailblazing American journalists highlights the power of the press in the interwar period.
In the fragile peace following the Great War, a surprising number of restless young Americans abandoned their homes and set out impulsively to see the changing world. In Fighting Words, Nancy F. Cott follows four who pursued global news -- from contested Palestine to revolutionary China, from Stalin's Moscow to Hitler's Berlin. As foreign correspondents, they became players in international politics and shaped Americans' awareness of critical interwar crises, the spreading menace of European fascism, and the likelihood of a new war -- while living romantic and sexual lives as modern and as hazardous as their journalism.
An indelible portrayal of a tumultuous era with resonance for our own, Fighting Words is essential reading on the power of the press and the growth of an American sense of international responsibility.
In the fragile peace following the Great War, a surprising number of restless young Americans abandoned their homes and set out impulsively to see the changing world. In Fighting Words, Nancy F. Cott follows four who pursued global news -- from contested Palestine to revolutionary China, from Stalin's Moscow to Hitler's Berlin. As foreign correspondents, they became players in international politics and shaped Americans' awareness of critical interwar crises, the spreading menace of European fascism, and the likelihood of a new war -- while living romantic and sexual lives as modern and as hazardous as their journalism.
An indelible portrayal of a tumultuous era with resonance for our own, Fighting Words is essential reading on the power of the press and the growth of an American sense of international responsibility.
416 pages, Hardcover
Published March 17, 2020
2 people are currently reading
154 people want to read
About the author
Nancy F. Cott
49 books17 followersNancy F. Cott is Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University, and the director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 28, 2022
I really wanted to enjoy this book. It dove so deeply into the lives of its subjects and I was pleasantly surprised at Cott's deliberate inclusion (rather than gloss over) the queer histories and experiences of the time.
That being said, I think this book's fatal flaw is the sheer density of knowledge. What could be a fun, adventurous narrative of global travel, brewing war, geopolitical turmoil, romantic entanglements and those who, as journalists, captured and shared these stories with world, ends up getting bogged down by an excessive sharing of facts, name-dropping of figures that weren't always relevant, and too much bouncing back and forth among her 4 protagonists within each chapter.
Cott's scope is certainly ambitious, and I commend her for this undertaking, but I found myself skimming through a lot of the book's historical meanderings.
That being said, I think this book's fatal flaw is the sheer density of knowledge. What could be a fun, adventurous narrative of global travel, brewing war, geopolitical turmoil, romantic entanglements and those who, as journalists, captured and shared these stories with world, ends up getting bogged down by an excessive sharing of facts, name-dropping of figures that weren't always relevant, and too much bouncing back and forth among her 4 protagonists within each chapter.
Cott's scope is certainly ambitious, and I commend her for this undertaking, but I found myself skimming through a lot of the book's historical meanderings.
May 20, 2020
Nancy Cott, a distinguished historian, has written an important book about four talented American journalists who worked in Europe and Asia as foreign correspondents in the 1920s and 1930s. She reveals the public and private lives of women and men who covered international politics to bring world news home to the United States. Fighting Words will be read by historians and by journalists who want to understand the history of their own field, but I recommend it as well-crafted non-fiction for the general reader. I couldn't put it down.
--Dolores Hayden, Professor Emerita, Architecture and American Studies, Yale University
--Dolores Hayden, Professor Emerita, Architecture and American Studies, Yale University
June 17, 2020
Today's nonfiction characters are Fighting Words: The bold American Journalists Who Brought The World Home Between The Wars by Nancy F. Cott. It is 402 pages long and is published by basic books. The cover is blue with an old style spiral notebook in the center. The intended readers is someone who's interested in It has to be, journalistic history, and the lives of four journalists over the course of the 1920s and 30s. There is mild foul language sexuality and discussion of violence in this piece. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- At a time when print media reign supreme and newspapers were legion, a crop of young Americans impulsively left their homes to reinvent themselves as foreign correspondents. Dorothy Thompson, John Gunther, Vincent Sheehan, Rayna Raphaelson adopted the power of the press as their own as they travel the globe. In the tumultuous decades following the first world war, they confronted political challenges that still reverberate today- democracy vs authoritarianism, global responsibility versus isolationism, press objectivity versus propaganda. By the early 1930s that they were in anti-fascist Vanguard, keenly aware of Hitler's impending Menace, alerting Americans to political urgencies far away. They were recalibrating their intimate lives with lovers and spouses at the same time, navigating sexual passions and frictions. Their experiences trace the development of not only International journalism but also the making of the modern self.
A riveting group portrait of four extraordinary Americans abroad the Golden Age of foreign correspondents, Fighting Words shows how these youthful cosmopolitan's reshaped America's sense of its role in the world.
Review- An interesting, well-written, in-depth look at the lives of four people I knew absolutely nothing about. Cott gives the reader excellent insight into her four subjects by following them from their childhood to their deaths but the main focus of the book is on their reporting work during the 1920s and 30s. All four traveled the globe, some of them more than once, and they wrote about their experiences and the world that they encountered. With first-hand documents be that their personal journals or articles that they wrote, we see the world that they saw and experience it with them. At times the book can be slow going as there are many details, but in the end I found it very worth my time and I learned quite a bit about American journalism and four of the people who innovated with it. I do wonder why she decided to write one book about these four people instead of concentrating on one as any one of them would make a fascinating biography but that was my only complaint. The writing is engaging and interesting, the people themselves are fascinating, and this is a good non-fiction book.
I give this book a 4 out of 5 Stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
From the dust jacket- At a time when print media reign supreme and newspapers were legion, a crop of young Americans impulsively left their homes to reinvent themselves as foreign correspondents. Dorothy Thompson, John Gunther, Vincent Sheehan, Rayna Raphaelson adopted the power of the press as their own as they travel the globe. In the tumultuous decades following the first world war, they confronted political challenges that still reverberate today- democracy vs authoritarianism, global responsibility versus isolationism, press objectivity versus propaganda. By the early 1930s that they were in anti-fascist Vanguard, keenly aware of Hitler's impending Menace, alerting Americans to political urgencies far away. They were recalibrating their intimate lives with lovers and spouses at the same time, navigating sexual passions and frictions. Their experiences trace the development of not only International journalism but also the making of the modern self.
A riveting group portrait of four extraordinary Americans abroad the Golden Age of foreign correspondents, Fighting Words shows how these youthful cosmopolitan's reshaped America's sense of its role in the world.
Review- An interesting, well-written, in-depth look at the lives of four people I knew absolutely nothing about. Cott gives the reader excellent insight into her four subjects by following them from their childhood to their deaths but the main focus of the book is on their reporting work during the 1920s and 30s. All four traveled the globe, some of them more than once, and they wrote about their experiences and the world that they encountered. With first-hand documents be that their personal journals or articles that they wrote, we see the world that they saw and experience it with them. At times the book can be slow going as there are many details, but in the end I found it very worth my time and I learned quite a bit about American journalism and four of the people who innovated with it. I do wonder why she decided to write one book about these four people instead of concentrating on one as any one of them would make a fascinating biography but that was my only complaint. The writing is engaging and interesting, the people themselves are fascinating, and this is a good non-fiction book.
I give this book a 4 out of 5 Stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
April 10, 2020
It felt like two parallel books - one as advertised by the title/subtitle on corespondents going out in the 20’s and 30’s to cover the turbulent world. Then a second on who those correspondents were having sex with at any given time. The second topic seemed to matter more to the author than the first. It could just be the book was poorly titled. It is certainly well written and the sexuality portion is astonishingly well researched. In regards to the correspondents’ day time pursuits, it feels odd how little detail there was - we rarely get anything in their published voices. No quotes for the most part. Seems inexplicable.
February 18, 2020
This is a historical account of four journalists who traveled tbe world and reported home. It shows how journalism effectspur perceptions of what is happening and how good journalism can be.
I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.
I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.
January 21, 2023
academically researched and compulsively readable, FIGHTING WORDS profiles several American journalists who worked overseas in the years between WWI and WWII. I picked up the book to learn more abt Dorothy Thompson’s coverage of the rise of Nazism and became fascinating by Thompson as a person, professional, & thinker. FIGHTING WORDS is a model for the narrative nonfiction to which I aspire!
December 17, 2020
They went, they saw, they worked
Their words about the world.
Their words about the world.
March 18, 2022
Oh, to be a foreign correspondent in the ’20s and ’30s.
June 5, 2020
See my review at Reading World
April 9, 2020
In this splendid,fast-paced historical account of four globe-trotting American journalists mainly during the 1920s and 1930s, Cott not only paints compelling portraits of her protagonists but uses them as entrypoints to the great political events that roiled those decades. Three were long-lived and amazingly prolific, and were once universally well-known: Dorothy Thompson, John Gunther, and Vincent Sheean. The fourth, Rayna Rafaelson, died young in Moscow; her professional work, strongly bent toward advocacy for leftwing movements of the time, left little trace, but she served as a catalyst and inspiration for others who populate Cott's book, particularly Sheean.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews