The View from the Ground - Softcover

Gellhorn, Martha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871132125 ISBN 13: 9780871132123

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994

Synopsis

First published in 1959, but now offered in a revised and expanded edition, The View from the Ground presents over six decades of Gellhorn's ruminations on political, civil, and social issues and crises, from a lynching in the American South in the 1930s through a recent visit to Cuba to see what is new and what remains the same in a country that is still off limits to most Americans. Gellhorn's ability to get to the truth of a situation heard makes her writing transcend the short shelf life of most reportage.

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Reviews

Six decades of modern history are condensed into this collection of essays by veteran novelist and journalist Gellhorn, who set out for Paris in 1930, aged 21, with a suitcase and $75, determined to become a foreign correspondent "within a few weeks." In the succeeding 58 years, she has been witness, for starters, to a lynching in Mississippi and to the fall of Czechoslovakia in the '30s, the plight of Italian war orphans in the '40s, the growth of Israel and the Palestinian "problem" in the '50s and '60s, post-Franco Spain in the '70s and the new Cuba in the '80s. Gellhorn has reported on the McCarthy hearings, the Eichmann trial, the Vietnam peace talks, and, more recently, the nuclear protests by the women of Greenham Common, England, and torture in El Salvador. She is a past master of personal journalism, a partisan of human rights who has always regarded writing as "payment for the chance to look and learn." This anthology, a companion to Gellhorn's The Face of War (Paperbacks Forecasts Feb. 12), is a testament to the upheavals in ordinary lives during peacetime wrought by this century's unsavory, divisive politics; it is also a tribute to the few who, like Gellhorn herself, have stood for justice. Gellhorn's obscurity is singularly unwarranted; she is a wise woman and writer.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gellhorn's anthology of articles on political events written over six decades covers a lynching in the Deep South in 1931, the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1940s, Israel in the 1950s, the Eichmann trial in 1962, the death of Franco in 1976, and El Salvador in 1984. Perhaps better-known as a fiction writer, she writes with passion, perspective, and a sense of humor. Her insights and perspectives are compassionate and humane and provide compelling reading. This joins her first collection of journalism, The Face of War (S. & S., 1959; Atlantic Monthly Pr., 1988, rev. ed.). For general and informed readers. Melinda Stivers Leach, Precision Editorial Svces., Wondervu, Colo.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0871132125
• ISBN 13: 9780871132123
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432