Customer Reviews

Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life

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I have been a Martha Gellhorn fan snce I found a copy of Travels With Myself and Another on the shelf at Hatchard's in London in 1983. I had never heard of Gellhorn, but was immediately taken with her no-nonsense reporter's style of writing. I scooped up all her non-fiction and some of her fiction. After reading both of Carl Rollyson's bios of her (one written before she died, against her wishes, the other right after her death), I thought I knew a little about Gellhorn. After reading Moorehead's bio, I found out just how little.

This is likely to be the standard text on Gellhorn's life. It is complete, readable, and doesn't pull any punches. You get Gellhorn, warts and all, and there are plenty of warts. There was a lot of information here that I hadn't known, and wouldn't have guessed. It may even be too much information. I think I may know more about Gellhorn now than I really wanted to.

Martha Gellhorn was a terrific war reporter, a great non-fiction writer, a competent author of fiction, and a fascinating person. Moorehead's biography captures all that and is well worth your time.

This new biography on Martha Gellhorn by Caroline Moorehead is a most gripping biography from a number of angles. First of all, Moorehead chronicles Gellhorn's personal and professional life with interesting and amusing anecdotes and many of Martha's ad hominem humorous quips. As a writer and a war correspondent, few women in this field can match Gellhorn's scope and travels. It is unfortunate that most people only know of Gellhorn as Hemingway's third wife.Moorehead, however, covers Gellhorn's entire life without added emphasis on the Hemingway marriage, which would have pleased Gellhorn greatly. A valuable fringe benefit of this biography is the expansive coverage of Gellhorn's famous acquaintances in her work as a war correspondent as well as in her personal life....Eleanor Roosevelt and President Roosevelt, Gen James Gavin, Robert Capa, photographer,Leonard Bernstein, and
H.G. Wells. In reading this biography one also acquires a feel for the politics of the era and its history...the Spanish Civil War, World WarII, and even the Vietnam War. History becomes most interesting reading in this superb biography.

Caroline Moorehead captures the passion of trend-setting journalist Martha Gellhorn in this biography. She follows Gellhorn through the Spanish Civil War, a turbulent marriage to (fellow friend of Spanish loyalists) Ernest Hemingway, and Gellhorn's success in breaking tradition by accompanying the invading Allied armies in World War II. Moorehead's sense of history is acute and she avoids the pitfall of over-dramatizing.

The book falls short only in its failure to resolve the contradictions of Gellhorn's personality...the promiscuous woman who was ambivalent toward sex...the egalitarian who cultivated the high and mighty...the compulsive wanderer and adventurer who cherished the companionship of her mother and close friends. We want to like Gellhorn, but we don't understand her well enough to get there.

I'm a Gellhorn fan, no doubt. However, I'm able to separate the journalist from the legend and the myth from the woman, who like so many of us, had clay feet. It's interesting to me how many men develop a virulent dislike of her, while most women can see past her many flaws, admire her courage, and take the inspirational parts of her life for what they are. I suppose if you have very set ideas about what a woman should be like, then Martha Gellhorn's bio is not for you.

However, I'd recommend her work and this biog. For the open minded.

I had never heard of Martha Gellhorn until a read a magazine review of this book. What an amazing woman; she certainly covered a lot of ground in her very long, very full life. While she was by no means perfect - in fact, often selfish and detached - she was a strong, active and fearless woman who always went after what she wanted. Moorehead's biography is a beautiful read, including direct quotes from many of Martha's personal notes, together with her own talented writing.

I found this book thoroughly absorbing, a meal for the intellect and the soul.

Martha Gellhorn was a woman ahead of her time. Carolyn Moorehead does a good job of chronicling each chapter of Gellhorn's illustrious life as a war correspondent and writer. And what an amazing span of history Martha witnessed, from the Spanish Civil War up to the invasion of Panama. A rather fearless woman who "ran with the wolves", Gellhorn had friendships and love affairs with legends. Of course, she is known for having been married to Ernest Hemingway... but she was also friend and confidant of H.G. Wells, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein... and she crossed paths with Diego Rivera, Colette, Adlai Stevenson, and many other notables of the 20th Century.

Marha really had two great loves in her life: being where the action was, where the great issues of the century were being decided, and secondly , escaping to colorful places where she could find solitude. She best loved the places that afforded freedom and sun, like Mexico, Cuba and Kenya.

Of course,she was full of contradictions, personally, and unsuited for motherhood. I wish only that this book had exposed more of her acute observations about the way that the world works, and her true courage. This is a woman who at 85 yrs. of age, suffering from macular degeneration and other maladies, made a valiant effort to continue speaking for the oppressed.

She was sharp until the end of her days. Moorehead has of this writing published a book of Gellhorn's letters which better illuminates Martha's character, and should serve as a good companion to this biography.

Christiane Amanpour, Lara Logan et. al. owe a great debt to this woman, though they can hardly hope to match her reportorial savvy and brilliance. As Moorehead acknowledges, Martha inspires nostalgia for the days when a reporter went to the core of things, with words honestly written in simple notebooks--words that could be believed.

She believed all governments inexorably abused power. She said of Lyndon Johnson: "Never trust a Texan further than you can throw a rhino."

Martha, you rocked.

Martha Gellhorn was a controversial journalist, and as anyone can see, this biography is either loved or hated without a lot of opinion in between.I fall in the love camp.The book is a good job at capturing the subject, warts and all.The author has clearly gone to great lengths to gather information that allowed her to capture the public and private essence of Gellhorn.Moorehead backed up her presentation many times with quotes from Gellhorn's voluminous correspondence.This is not the author's first biography and it shows;it is a first class job at piecing together the subject's long and complex life.The author is frequently clever in her wording and general handling of the book.If I have any criticism it is that the narrative occasionally moves forward without preparing the reader for a change in subject.
I did not find this book boring.It is a book that would interest most readers that enjoy reading about 20th century history.Gellhorn's strong personality,wartime reporting,travel episodes ,love and sex life,marriage to Hemingway,and general passage through life offer a lot of spice for the reader. Though Gellhorn was a bit prickly or "difficult" at times,she was a witness to a substantial number of historical events.Her reports were first class and continue to be popular today within the reading public (The Face of War,Travels with Myself and Another, etc).Unquestionally she was a controversial character, but she counted and is an appropriate subject of interest.

I loved this book. I admire Martha Gellhorn not because she was an admirable woman, but because she lived a life uniquely hers and kept a sense of humor until the end. But the end is again troubling. Yet another strong woman who ends her own life. Is this the only way to have the ultimate control? It is consistent with the way she lived her life and thus, perhaps, the only natural end.

I have been reading Gellhorn's non-fiction and am generally dispondent that I have found myself at the end of what is readily available. I picked up a copy of Travels with Myself and Another at random and became fascinated by Gellhorn. On the strength of another reviewers recommendation, I selected this book rather than others. I was not disappointed. It is a strange thing to read someone through their own eyes and then to see them without their own filter. Her own professional writing portrays her as a strong woman at ease on her own, while excerpts of her private letters suggest that she was very lonely. In any event, I zipped through the book and was surprised at the manner in which her life ended. Although, on reflection, I shouldn't have been.

Outward calm, inward extreme disorder of mind were characteristics of Gellhorn's self-description. In her sixties she stopped traveling and determined to live in London in Chelsea. She liked people who shaped their own lives. She hated liars and sitting on the fence. She was a bad cook. Her metaphors belittled unhappiness. She was beset with self-doubt, a strain of failure, loneliness. The Gellhorns of St. Louis had been a talking family. Martha left Bryn Mawr after her junior year and became a cub reporter to the ALBANY TIMES UNION. In the same year, 1929, she returned to St. Louis, moved on to New York City, and by spring, 1930, she was in Paris. France was the leading economic power of Europe.

In 1934 Martha returned to America and was hired by the Roosevelt administration to investigate the conditions of the textile workers. Seeking to turn her material into a book, Martha stayed at the White House. She grew distracted, however, and moved to New Hartford, Connecticut. By 1937 Martha was back in Paris, the jumping off place to cover the war in Spain. She wrote for COLLIER'S. When she studied the Munich Pact, she felt she had uncovered dishonesty, cowardice. Czech democracy was lost.

In 1939 Martha stayed with Hemingway in Cuba and Sun Valley, Idaho. She became fond of the three Hemingway sons. She wrote a ninety thousand word novel, LIANA, and dedicated it to her mother. Gellhorn sought to report on World War II even without formal military accreditation. She returned to Europe, England, in 1943. The city was full of journalists and many American ones. She became friends with Irwin Shaw. Except for Edmund Wilson and Cyril Connolly, the writers had succumbed to having a sincere and earnest tone.

COLLIER'S appreciated Martha's gift for showing vivid images. After writing six articles she departed for Algiers. When she returned to Ernest Hemingway the couple fought over money, drinking, work, and the house in Cuba. They were openly unhappy. In order to witness the Normandy Invasion, Martha crossed secretly on a hospital ship. When found out, (she wrote two articles about the crossing), she was arrested by the military authorities. Afterwards she used energy and charm to travel with the regiments to glean information for her stories.

After its liberation, Paris wasn't much changed except that everyone was starving. Martha was drawn to absolute professionalism and to James Gavin, the youngest divisional commander. She reported that she understood the true evil of man at Dachau. She covered the Nuremberg trials. Later Martha Gellhorn settled in Mexico for several years, followed by Rome, Africa, Wales and England. She married again, in 1954, and before that date adopted a son, an Italian war orphan. By 1998 she could no longer read, work, or travel. Her need to witness and record events had become impossible.

This is an excellent book about a distinguished writer.