Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War

by Deborah Cohen

They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendor of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers, and Balkan gun-runners, and then knocked back doubles late into the night.

Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is the extraordinary story of John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson. In those tumultuous years, they landed exclusive interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, Nehru and Gandhi, and helped shape what Americans knew about the world. Alongside these backstage glimpses into the halls of power, they left another equally incredible set of records. Living in the heady afterglow of Freud, they subjected themselves to frank, critical scrutiny and argued about love, war, sex, death, and everything in between.

Plunged into successive global crises, Gunther, Knickerbocker, Sheean, and Thompson could no longer separate themselves from the turmoil that surrounded them. To tell that story, they broke long-standing taboos. From their circle came not just the first modern account of illness in Gunther's Death Be Not Proud--a memoir about his son's death from cancer--but the first no-holds-barred chronicle of a marriage: Sheean's Dorothy and Red, about Thompson's fractious relationship with Sinclair Lewis.

Told with the immediacy of a conversation overheard, this revelatory book captures how the global upheavals of the twentieth century felt up close.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Journalism, Biography, Politics, World War II, War

557 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2022

About the author

I was raised in Louisville, Kentucky and now live in Chicago, where I teach history at Northwestern University. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is my fourth book.

I write regularly for the Atlantic about subjects ranging from private lives to war photography to punk rock. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/de...

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am having trouble rating this book, so I am settling for a 3 which may make me an outlier. This is basically a biographic portrait of four important journalist who covered WWII, both the war and the run-up to that war: i.e.John Gunther, Dorothy Thomson, H.R. Knickerbocker, and Vincent Sheean. Unjustly, they are barely remembered today but they changed journalism in the 20th century. They met and interviewed such people as Hitler, Mussolini, FDR, Nehru, Gandhi, and many more who were positioning themselves into history. Their style was straighforward, gutsy, and often controversial.

So far, so good. But the author seemed to be more interested in the private lives of these individuals......bad marriages, homosexuality, bi-sexuality, alcohol consumption, irresponsible behavior, etc.. I was expecting a historic book about their pioneering work in journalism and not a tell-all about who was sleeping with who.

The author's coverage of the interviews and information that these individuals wrote and sometimes had to smuggle out of Europe is quite well done and enlightening but is overshadowed by the very gossipy aspect of the book. It didn't totally ruin the book but it wasn't to my taste. Take your chances!

[Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, for me, was s-l-o-w. The author has leaned heavily on personalities, love lives, sexual preferences and everyone’s obsession with Freud and psychoanalysis. The book felt top heavy with personal lives.

Why the Hotel Imperial is even mentioned in the title I don’t know because as far as I recall it was mentioned about three times in the entire book.

I didn’t know any of these people before this book but I tip my hat to them today because the bits I did get about their professional work shows they were pioneers in what real journalism should be and I hope there are others following in their footsteps today as it is absolutely URGENT at this time.

The book was disappointing.

[Laurence Sloan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author had access to a huge archive of letters, diaries, notes, scraps of paper that John Gunther and, later, his widowed second wife left to the University of Chicago. Ms. Cohen, professor of history at Northwestern Univ., weaves together a novel-like story of the top American journalists of the period between WWI and WWII, who reported on the changes of democracies in Europe -- Italy, Hungary, Austria, Romania and others -- into dictatorships. Besides John Gunther, the journalists include Dorothy Thompson (New York Herald Tribune and NBC radio, H. R. Knickerbocker (Hearst), Jimmy Sheean (author and international journalist) among many others. Dictators were a new phenomenon. Kings and emperors were going by the wayside. These journalists scored interviews with Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. They covered the fight for independence in India and the intractable problems in Palestine with the rise of Zionism.

Just as interesting is the in-depth look at the personal lives of these journalists. Alcohol flowed like water. Everyone was psychoanalyzing each other. Breaking out of the restrictions of the Victorian era, sex was an open topic of discussion and many marriages were on rocky ground. The counter point of the personal lives with the geopolitical disruptions is a fascinating theme in this history of the times. There are so many similarities as to current events, such as the invasion of the Ukraine by Putin, it is a very timely and well-written read.

[Herodotus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminds us that Putin's aggression against his neighbors is a repeat of the European story of the 1930s. It reminds us, too, that when dictators engage in such aggression, it is surrounded by a fog of lies. Thus what is absolutely essential is an active press that can see that the truth gets out.
Cohen's book tells the story of a handful of journalists who saw to it that the truth got out about Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, and helped convince a reluctant America to stand up for freedom.

What makes the book so special is the focus is also on the personal lives of these journalists, reminding us of another important learning from the 1930s: that is, when aggression intrudes into political life, it also invades personal life. Thus the journalists that Cohen follows find their lives turned upside down as the countries they are covering are torn apart.

[Sesta Djokovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know anything about this group of journalists but I picked up the book after I heard the author on the radio. I started reading it on Sunday afternoon and could barely put it down. What an incredible group of reporters. They interviewed everybody, Hitler to Gandhi to Churchill. The book puts you right there in the middle of the action so you're living the history right alongside them. I felt sad when I got to the end because I really enjoyed spending time in the company of these larger than life characters.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deborah Cohen's "Last Call at the Hotel Imperial" is a well researched and copiously annotated book about John Gunter, H.R. Knickerbocker, Jimmy Sheean and Dorothy Thompson; their lives, their loves and their reporting of the world prior to WWII. Their lives were as wildly exciting, confusing and self-destructive as was the world upon which they reported. They interviewed the most prominent men of their days, including, Hiler, Mussolini, Nehru and Gandhi. They attempted to relate to the public the maddingly dangerous future facing the world in the early 1930's while trying to deal with personal lives which were equally mad and equally destructive. Traveling from global crisis to global crisis, bluntly reporting on dictators, they created the rules of modern journalism. This is a fascinating view into the halls of power in a most fascinating time in history. This is not a book to rush through, but one to savor. I urge you to read this book, but also to read it deliberately with time for reflection. I received this book as a first-reads winner.

[Janilyn Kocher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cohen writes an introspective look at the cutting edge journalists of the first part of the 20th century. John Gunther, Dorothy Thompson, H.R. Knickerbocker, and Vincent Sheehan were all real investigative journalism, something that is extinct today. They were on the forefront of memoir world events and didn’t flinch at printing the truth, no matter the cost.
I found their private lives endlessly fascinating, most of which I knew very little, save Dorothy Thompson. I am particularly interested in her because of her friendship with Rose Wilder Lane.
I found this book to be thorough and insightful. If you want to see what constituted real journalism looked like, read this book.
Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the advance read.

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn’t what I was expecting. There was too much personal detail about the reporters, rather than about their work. The way the personal details were interlarded in each paragraph, it was impossible to skim the book to avoid it.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and researched, Cohen brings these incredible people to life.

[Lee Woodruff · Rating 5 out of 5]

People reminisce about the golden age of journalism in the early days of the 20th century, and the present war in Ukraine reminds us of the risk journalists take to get the story. This incredibly well-researched book covers an iconic group of cup reporters who roamed a war ravaged world in the 1920’s while empires collapsed and democracies faltered. Gunther, Knickerbocker, Sheehan and Thompson (the only woman) became a close-knit American band who rewrote the rules of modern journalism, riding atop mules or first-class sleeper cars, chasing empresses and Balkan gun-runners, while charging toward the story. The result is a vivid work of narrative history, uniting public and private affairs, that illuminates what it was like to live through the upheaval of the world between wars.

[Cynda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the theory of the book far better than the execution. Here are threaded various journalists' biographies, including John Gunther, Frances Fineman Gunther, H R Knickerbocker. These and other journalists globe trotted in the years between the World Wars. They told of countries, cultures, and regimes. A couple of times--like twice--I had an ah-ha moment where I appreciated the connections made. The text of the book 419 pages. I should have had many more ah-ha moments. I think book has validity for those who want to know more about the journalists and their general movements and connections. Still. Still the interconnected history of a world moving both past and toward world war is too much missing.

Read with GR Non Fiction Book Club. We have previously read a group biography that informed a more general history: River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard, so I know that a group biography can work for me. Reading on.

[AGreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book-shows how the personal lives of the reporters became interwoven with the big political stories they covered.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

4/22

Internal debate: does this book deserve 2.5 stars (marked up to 3 by Goodreads) because it IS a fine work of scholarship? The author plowed though a slew of archives, some of them mere scraps of paper, so we're told. It's a festival for lovers of books built from primary sources. And the writing is good, too.

But, as you already know, I'm giving it a big fat "just OK" 2 stars. I could make an argument for 2.49 stars because of all the virtues mentioned above, or 1.75 for all the reasons mentioned below. Either way, it's a Goodreads two stars. It may be somewhat memorable because it was so disappointing and some of the people profiled were so flawed (I really was thinking disgusting), but I won't be recommending it to anyone.

See my in-progress thinking below:

4/12/22: This is one of those well-done books that might fall into the "how much do I care about all this detail?" category. OK, so let's learn about these important "foreign correspondents," and supposedly how they "took on a world at war" -- but not until we go through dozens-becoming-hundreds of pages about their kinky personal lives and loves in the 19-teens and 1920s. Should I be skimming? I guess . . . but after a week I'm 120+ pages in and just barely touching the 1930s, so I should have been skimming days ago.

(It's also one of those books -- seems like more and more these days -- with end notes without numbers to tell the reader to take a look. Is this a way to save production costs? You bet!)

But nevertheless, he persevered, to borrow a phrase, sort of.

4/14/22: Picking up speed as conflict gets closer. Now into the Italian invasion of Abyssinia.

4/17/22: Only 70 pages to go and now into July 1943. It’s very clear that the book’s subtitle is misleading. The “world at war” these people took on was their OWN world and the war was the bottle, their sex conquests and failures, the abortions of their wives and lovers, the very neurotic behavior, etc etc etc.

Was thinking the book might squeak out three stars. Probably not.

4/22/22 again. Definitely not a three-star book. I should have bailed out but I always was hopeful that once the author got to WW II we might actually see what the subtitle promised. But no . . . this could have been any bunch of drunken, philandering, conflicted writers.

The book contained very little information on a couple of the s0-called "stars" of the book. We don't see much of Knickerbocker or his work and Sheean does very little work. We get the most on John Gunther and as much or even more on his wife/ex-wife, who really was a steaming pile of neurosis. And calling Gunther a "reporter taking on a world at war" is a tremendous stretch. He didn't seem to want to be a "reporter"; rather, he wanted to be a "writer." Thus his Inside . . . books, which kept him away from the real action.

Dorothy Thompson's profile is perhaps the best, as she DID accomplish much during WW II.

The gold standard in "group biographies" has to be Walter Isaacson's The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. Those people, including Dean Acheson, George Kennan, and Averell Harriman, really were valuable contributors to the 20th century, and the title and subtitle are true! Dr. Cohen, on the other hand, has given us a Shakespearean work: "Much Ado About Nothing," or at least not much.

Reviews in the Wall Street Journal usually come through for me. This is the second bummer in a row.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

They were the media superstars of their time. Millions read their dispatches from overseas, listened to them on the radio, and attended their lectures. In today’s atomized media environment, there is no one who compares to the breadth of their influence on public affairs. The closest analogue were the network TV anchors of the 1960s and 70s. Walter Cronkite. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. Peter Jennings. Celebrities, one and all. And historian Deborah Cohen brings them back to life in Last Call at the Hotel Imperial, her engaging group biography of the most celebrated American foreign correspondents of the 1930s and 40s. Without exception, they viewed war inevitable as the 1930s unfolded. And they helped lay the foundation for American intervention in Europe when at last it came to the USA.

FOCUSING ON FIVE MEN AND WOMEN
Cohen chooses to center her account on what she calls the “inner circle” of American foreign correspondents. Three men and two women constituted a tightly-knit group who knew one another well (and sometimes slept with one another, or with their spouses). Only two of these five journalists linger in memory today: John Gunther (1901-70), who wrote bestselling books based on his travels, and Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961), whose syndicated newspaper column and radio broadcasts made her the most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. But, in their time, all five were famous and their observations and opinions widely followed.

THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS

JOHN GUNTHER
Anyone old enough to have been aware of the world in the 1950s is likely to remember John Gunther. Although he was the author of 25 nonfiction works and seven novels, he was best known to the public for the “Inside” series (Inside Europe, Inside Asia, Inside U.S.A., and three later volumes about Africa, Russia, and South America). The books were runaway bestsellers, routinely featured by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Gunther interviewed national leaders, policymakers, cultural icons, and humble folk alike, conveying what he learned from them with often idiosyncratic comments of his own.

FRANCES FINEMAN
Frances Fineman was married to John Gunther from 1927 to 1944, although the couple frequently separated. Both were miserable for extended periods, as Cohen tells the tale. Fineman was a brilliant journalist in her own right, winning plaudits for her work when she managed to write up her stories. But she spent much of her energy, especially In the early years of their marriage, feeding ideas to Gunther. Sometimes he credited her in print, sometimes not. Together, the couple had a son, Johnny, who died at 17 of a brain tumor in 1947. Gunther’s memoir of Johnny’s death was among the first books to explore the theme. Death Be Not Proud was considered his finest work.

H. R. KNICKERBOCKER
Texas-born H. R. (Knick) Knickerbocker (1898-1949), the son of a preacher, studied psychiatry at Columbia University. He reported from Berlin from 1923 to 1933, but Hitler immediately expelled him upon coming to power. Others in the “inner circle” later achieved the same distinction. He was critical of Nazism but admired Mussolini and the fascist state he was building in Italy. Knickerbocker won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about Stalin’s first Five Year Plan. Later, he covered the Spanish Civil War. His wife, Agnes, carried on a years-long affair with John Gunther and led to the two men, previously the best of friends, becoming estranged.

VINCENT SHEEAN
James Vincent (Jimmy) Sheean (1899-1975) wrote a dozen books but was best known for Personal History, a memoir of his experiences as a reporter overseas. The book won one of the first National Book Awards and became the basis of the film Foreign Correspondent, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. Sheean gained recognition for his reporting from the Spanish Civil War for the New York Herald Tribune. In 1963, in Dorothy and Red, he exposed the tumultuous marriage of his friends Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis, who was known as Red. Both were dead by then. Had they been alive, they would not have been pleased.

DOROTHY THOMPSON
Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961) was the most remarkable figure of the group and, by all accounts, the most famous in her heyday. She was one of very few women reporters on the radio in the 1930s and gained such prominence that FDR frequently consulted her. Her best-known work as a reporter were her dispatches from Germany. She met and interviewed Hitler in 1931 and wrote a book about it. Hitler expelled her from the country in 1934. In 1936, Thompson began writing a syndicated column, “On the Record,” for the New York Herald Tribune. The column was read by ten million people and gained her such a large following that NBC offered her a network radio program. She also wrote a monthly column for the Ladies’ Home Journal for 24 years.

Cohen relates a revealing story about Thompson and her husband. Dorothy and Red are lying in bed in the morning when FDR calls. The phone is on Red’s side of the bed, so when he hands her the phone, the cord stretches tightly across his neck, pinning him to his pillow. Dorothy and the President speak for half an hour. Red, of course, was Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930.

A FLAWED ACCOUNT
Cohen does an admirable job setting the scene in which these men and women plied their trade. Her account of their work in the 1930s is rich in detail and illuminating. But the book’s subtitle is misleading. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial isn’t really the story of The Reporters Who Took On a World at War. There is little about their work during the pivotal years of World War II (1937-45). And, throughout, Cohen devotes rather more attention to the on-again, off-again marriages of her subjects and their sex lives than she does to their interaction with the movers and shakers of the time. It’s almost as though, arriving at a stopping point late in the 1930s, she decided to cut the book short. Of course, that may have been her intention all along but the publisher insisted on imposing a misleading subtitle to increase the book’s appeal.

Please note that other American journalists were equally influential during the same period but are not central to Cohen’s story. Edward R. Murrow and H. V. Kaltenborn were radio journalists, not writers, and fall outside the parameters of Cohen’s book. And Walter Duranty of the New York Times may have been a Soviet agent. His disgraceful reports whitewashing Stalin’s genocide in the Ukraine were notorious—but he was widely regarded at the time at America’s leading expert on the Soviet Union. There were many other Americans reporting for newspapers from overseas in the 1930s and 40s—not to mention a much larger number of Europeans and others. But none of the others achieved equal impact.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Cohen (1968-) is a Professor of History at Northwestern University and the author of four books. She graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1990, and completed her Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Cohen is of Ukrainian Jewish descent. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky.

[Jan C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this on my way back from Chicago and finished this week when I was held incommunicado from the world. (Hurricane/Tropical Storm Helene knocked out a bunch of communication towers.)

It is mainly about four journalists, most of whom were from Chicago/Illinois. I was going to give it *** but the part about the loss of John Gunther's son bumped it up. As I was hearing it, I thought to myself "is she talking about Death Be Not Proud"? Yes, she was.

Up until that point, it was pretty much just an okay book. But it was entertaining.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this proved to be less interesting than expected - and so slow. The experiences of a handful of American journalists reporting from around the world in the 1920s-1940s should make for a fascinating read, but while their professional lives provided plenty of interesting stories, I was vastly less interested in the sex lives and interpersonal entanglements of what came across as, quite frankly, a bunch of rather unpleasant characters. That part took up far more space than anybody could have needed.

[Branden · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐

Geeze, this book is something else. Was it what I expected when I bought it and brought it home? No. Did it enlighten me about a group of people I didn't know much about? Absolutely! Ten-fold!

This book weaves you through a tumultuous time in world history as the author peels back the lives of the people reporting on it. At times, I wasn't sure where I was going, but I was certainly enjoying the journey.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really enjoyable book and I'm glad it caught my eye in a display at a bookstore. Definitely helps that it has a pretty cool cover that does a good job of communicating what it's about. This book chronicles a generation of American foreign correspondents both in their work abroad reporting the rise of dictatorships and totalitarianism in Europe and beyond and in the often messy details of their personal lives. I'll admit I was surprised by the number of abortions and queer relationships throughout the book, and I should take that as a reminder that the past isn't really that different from now.

Well, except of course for the important ways it was different that drive so much of the book. After all, in the modern world of 24 hour cable news and constant updates from every social media site, it's easy to be connected to events happening all across the planet. But as this book begins in the 1910s and 20s, that's obviously not the case yet. Part of that of course is the differences in technology - radio was the big mass communication tech and newspapers were king of news. Throughout the book there's a lot of cabling back and forth to get reports into papers and for Americans all foreign news is coming at something of a delay.

And all of that technological change is interesting in and of itself, but that's not really the focus here. No, the big way things are different is that America was much more isolated. There wasn't as much of a general interest in the goings on in Europe and Asia, and much of this book shows how the foreign correspondents it focuses on helped to drive change in that. Because it's not like there was nothing going on in Europe, but even after America became involved in the Great War there was a feeling that we should've stayed out of it and left well enough alone. And while many Americans did go to Europe in the 20s, when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression loomed up, many went home and felt it was important to focus on America.

The people Cohen focuses on here, both the inner and outer circles as she delineates at the start of the book, chose to stay abroad and stay with the stories there. They hopped from European capital to capital chronicling the emergence of Hitler and Mussolini and the changing face of the Soviet Union. I enjoyed the fact that Cohen looks at figures with a range of views - some are all for Communism but become disillusioned while others stick with it. People at first dismiss Hitler but do come to realize the threat he represents. And then there's the guy writing for the Hearst papers that gave Hitler a column, which I'm never going to be over now that I've learned about it. It's fascinating comparing what I know looking back with the benefit of 21st century knowledge of history compared to what people at the time were seeing and feeling.

And as I said, there's a lot of soap opera here as well. Lots of affairs and sleeping around and marriages that last too long and marriages that fall apart immediately and the whole range of things you'd expect. I think generally the book manages to weave things together well, especially as Cohen makes it clear that many of the people she's interested in were themselves focused on the question of how the personal and the political connect. What do your personal choices mean in a world that seems to be going mad? It's sadly a theme that resonates all too well in the current day.

I did feel like the book gets a lot sketchier once it reaches World War II, with most of the narrative focusing on the twenties and especially the thirties and then skipping through the war years in much less page space. It's somewhat disappointing but I get the sense some of that may be because the main characters weren't together as often, driven apart by different jobs and needs as war raged across the world. I did appreciate the way the book brings things back together by showing John and Frances Gunther dealing with the loss of their son, and I find it interesting that after all the books John is shown writing, the one about that time is the only one that remains in print.

Overall, this was a really enjoyable read. It's written in a strong style that kept me engaged the whole time and eager to see what happens next. And importantly I feel like I've learned some things, both about these specific people and about this period of history. I feel like I have had my fill of some of these figures for now, but I do want to track down the author's suggested biography of Dorothy Thompson at some point because she was probably my favorite of this bunch. This was definitely a book that's well worth reading.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this crew.

[Andre Lorde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads like a novel but is a history book.

[Stephanie K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine having an intimate evening of deep conversation with 5 globe trotting American reporters who interviewed communist, authoritarian and democratic leaders on every continent. Who were also in psychoanalysis and fearlessly open about the difficulties of their personalities and relationships. I'm in awe of these men and women and what they accomplished. The fact that they are such witty, brutally honest and passionate characters makes this a really good read.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a trashy take on American foreign correspondents leading up to WWII; what tipped me over the edge was when the author referred to the Prince of Wales as His Majesty. Trivial, but shows the level of understanding the author brings to her subject. How did an editor not catch that?

[Casey Noller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I *loved* this book. As someone who went to school for journalism and with massive respect for the legion of foreign correspondents of past and present, I was eager to hear all about the lives—personal and professional—of WWII reporters. I believe the author did this brilliantly, smoothly alternating between different characters and time periods with excellent historical detail.
I understand the reviews that thought the author spoke too much about the relationships and inner sexual lives of the reporters, but I personally think it added a lot to the story and provided more detail to the time period.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read (in my case Audible listen) about the generation of interwar American foreign correspondents. The story is told as some of the literary confabs like the Lost Generation are recounted, as a set of overlapping biographies and accounts of friendships and love interests. The portraits are sympathetic but acknowledge flaws like alcoholism, womanizing, susceptibility to communist ideology at the height of Stalinism. It’s a little light on some of the major figures who have their own stories worth telling, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

[Martin]

I don’t believe in rating a book I didn’t finish. I found myself struggling through this and gave myself an arbitrary 100 pages before I gave up. Despite having a list of Personae at the front, there are too many characters for me to keep up with let alone develop any relationship or understanding. Despite a good review in the Wall Street Journal, I wasn’t enjoying it and there are too many others on my WTR list! So this is going on the Put On Hold shelf.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is more of a look in the personal lives of Dorothy Thompson, Vincent Sheean, H.R. Knickerbocker, and John Gunter than about their work. I found some interesting incites to Hitler and the time, but overall I found myself easily drifting using the audio version of the book.

How did I find this book? I saw a lady with it at Free State Brewery in Lawrence, KS and thought it could be interesting.

[Lisa Chiang · Rating 1 out of 5]

read to page 115 - too much "side" details, very hard to keep track of the characters (there are 4 main characters but many others), read like a history text book with lots of dates and unnecessary details and the flow of information just didn't work for me. I read as much as I did because I did enjoy the insight of this time period in journalism, but I just couldn't slog through to continue reading.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book presents an interesting perspective on global issues leading up to WWII, the war itself, and the aftermath as the globe was reconfigured. The reporters who told the stories were Trail Blazers in journalism, enhancing their reporting with personal reflection, giving rise to journalism as we know it today. Their own lives, on a personal and intimate level, reflected the chaos facing the world of that era. The book is extensively researched and well written, a worthwhile read.

[Yannicke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great insight into the lives, work and influence of a group of American reporters. Very interesting in terms of their historical context, political engagements, and role in shaping public opinion. Much of the book, however, focuses on the reporters' personal lives - affairs, relationships, etc. For me, that was far less interesting and could have been left out.

[Jack Chaucer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-researched, well-written and a fascinating angle for those who want a vantage point of world upheaval from the 1920s through the 1940s from the perspective of brave, talented, drunk, dysfunctional and must-read journalists of the time. They interviewed fascists, plowed into affairs and intertwined their stormy personal lives with the international tempest unfolding all around them.