Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent - Softcover

Gruber, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786708360 ISBN 13: 9780786708369

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

Long before feminism became a potent force in our time, Ruth Gruber was already blazing a trail for later generations of women. Now in paperback for the first time, this captivating memoir covers the first twenty-five years of an inspiring life, including these historic moments: Gruber's unprecedented academic career, which reached its zenith in 1932, when at twenty she became the world's youngest Ph.D. as a visiting American student at Cologne University, her return to Nazi Germany in 1935, and the rallies she attended where Hitler inveighed against "international Jews" like her; and her first stint as a foreign correspondent, when she became the only journalist to report from the Soviet Arctic, traveled in open cockpit seaplanes, met utopians who extolled Stalin's system, and gulag inmates who told her the bitter truth about his terrible schemes. Gruber writes with warmth, compassion, and humor, offering a life story that will be long remembered by all history lovers, adventurers, and women and men of all ages.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Full of record accomplishments--youngest Ph.D. in Germany, first American correspondent to travel to the Soviet Arctic--this memoir of her 1920's and 30's by veteran journalist Gruber (Rescue, 1987, etc.) is high on action but low on analysis. The daughter of Jewish immigrants, Gruber was born and raised in Brooklyn, where her precocious academic abilities were soon recognized. Encouraged by mentors, she excelled, first in high school, then in college, majoring in English and German. Awarded scholarships, she went on to graduate school in Wisconsin and at the Univ. of Cologne. There, in 1932, where she became at 20 the youngest Ph.D. in Germany, she also witnessed the growing power of Hitler and the spread of anti-Semitism. Intent on being a writer, Gruber returned to New York, but because of the Depression, jobs were scarce, and she began writing free-lance pieces for the New York Herald Tribune. A travel fellowship enabled her to return to Europe in 1935 as a correspondent for the Tribune to study women under democracy, Fascism, and Communism, which she did by traveling in Germany, where old friends had either fled or joined the Nazis; in England, where she had a disappointing interview with Virginia Woolf; and in the Soviet Union, where she traveled in what we now know as the Gulag, first by train, then by plane, and finally by ship across the Arctic Ocean. A woman to admire, with a remarkable story that's undercut by lackluster prose and a tendency to deal superficially with the darker side of times past. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Gruber ( Israel Today ), born in 1911, is not a household name despite her having written 13 books and serving as a foreign correspondent during the 1930s in countless dangerous locales. This memoir is beautifully crafted, covering her inner life sensitively as well as educating readers about what it was like to grow up Jewish in a Brooklyn "shtetl" in the early part of the century; to enter New York University as a 15-year-old freshman; to hitchhike to the University of Wisconsin to begin a master's degree in German; to study in Germany at the time of Hitler's ascension; and to explore Europe and the Soviet Arctic as a New York Herald Tribune journalist. Gruber changes some names for the sake of privacy, devaluing the book somewhat as a historical document. That reservation aside, this volume recalling her first 25 years is one of the most evocative journalistic autobiographies to appear. Readers will hope to see the rest of her story published. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786708360
• ISBN 13: 9780786708369
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336