Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel [Hardcover]

Ruth Gruber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2002

Inside of Time is a book for everyone eager to read about the personal and human side of our stirring times. The vivid recollections of a trailblazing eyewitness to history, combined with stories of Gruber’s intimate friendships with luminaries of the century, has created a book to cherish. In the Roosevelt administration and as a foreign correspondent with the New York Herald Tribune, Gruber worked with, wrote about, and was mentored by a cast that included Harold Ickes, FDR’s Secretary of the Interior, who in 1941 appointed Gruber as his personal representative to Alaska; Helen Rogers Reid, Herald Tribune publisher and Gruber’s boss, who scheduled her to speak at lecture forums where Gruber shared the podium with Churchill and DeGaulle; Golda Meir, with whom she swapped kitchen table confidences about their families; David Ben-Gurion, whose prophetic voice made him the most inspiring leader Gruber ever knew; and Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Gruber shepherded to Israel in the early 1950s. Spanning 1941–1955, Gruber also recalls the fierce anti-Semitism she overcame in Congress, the DP camps she saw in Germany after WWII, and traveling with the Israeli army during the War for Independence. Sixteen pages of photographs add to this enthralling autobiography by one of America's best journalists.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gruber was present for some of the most significant moments in mid-20th-century history, including the Nuremberg trials and the creation of the State of Israel, and now, at the age of 90, she still has the energy to comb through some of the 350 notebooks she filled during her career as a bureaucrat and journalist to write about her experiences during the years 1941-1952 with clarity, insight and warmth. Gruber was a 29-year-old foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in 1941 and author of the influential 1939 memoir I Went to the Soviet Arctic, when Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes sent her to Alaska to report on how best to both settle the territory and preserve its beauty. The assignment lasted 18 months, but her work for Ickes continued until 1946; her assignments included shepherding Holocaust survivors from Germany to a refugee camp at a New York State army outpost and working to ensure that those who wanted to could remain in the United States after the war. The war over, she returned to journalism, reporting from Europe and the Middle East. Along the way, she developed relationships with such world leaders as Eleanor Roosevelt, David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir (who served Gruber homemade cookies in her Tel Aviv apartment). Yet Gruber (whose many books include Raquela: A Woman of Israel, winner of a National Jewish Book Award) is unpretentious, using her finely honed journalistic skills to craft a look at history that manages to be both deeply personal and universal. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

 

“Ruth Gruber is an adventure in herself.” —New York Herald Tribune

“You couldn't invent Ruth Gruber . . . not even in a movie." —Richard Holbrooke, Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan

 

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; First Edition edition (November 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786710837
• ISBN-13: 978-0786710836
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,646,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ruth Gruber is an award-winning Jewish American journalist, photographer, and humanitarian. She was born in Brooklyn in 1911 and is the author of nineteen books, including the National Jewish Book Award-winning biography Raquela (1978).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What A Wonderful Life!, May 27, 2003

By 

Sunisurekick "sunisurekick" (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel (Hardcover)

What an amazing woman. Ruther Gruber is interviewed on BookTV.org. Don't miss the book or the interview!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars travel and journalism, May 11, 2011

By 

Diane S. Lilly (Issaquah WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel (Paperback)

Ruth Gruber has written nearly twenty books concerning her work as a journalist and humanitarian representative in many parts of the world. Her eye is very sharp and her understanding of the society she deals with makes for fascinating and informative reading.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars compelling, August 12, 2004

By 

NED "tangent" (sacramento, california) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel (Hardcover)

A role model because of her age, sex, and faith. I didn't find out much about Alaska but was captured by her involvement in her world. It was a different time. Could her experiences be repeated today?