Customer Reviews

The View from the Ground

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Martha Gellhorn has two books of journalism out, one called The Face of War,and this book, The View From The Ground. She has covered everything from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s through to the American invasion of Panama in the eighties. She refused to believe in "that objectivity crap" and wrote what she saw. She was that curious product that only America produces: the unaligned radical liberal. She thought that nations should be judged on the same ethical grounds as people, and this was how she approached her journalism. An example of this view is shown in her piece covering the Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann: "Adolf Eichmann is the most dire warning to us all. He is a warning to guard our souls; to refuse utterly and forever to allegiance without question, to obey orders silently, to scream slogans. He is a warning that the private conscience is the last and only protection of the civilized world."

Gellhorn cut through the crap and got to the core of the issue. She had a cold eye, a tough spirit, and a compasionate heart. She was unflinching in what she said. She reported back what she saw.She thought that the American invasion of Vietnam was wrong, and said so. She was banned by America from entering Vietnam as a result. Gellhorn was a compelling writer, who wrote in a beautiful clear prose. We dont see her type any more, which is a great shame. She was, above all, a great chronicler of the 20th century.

Well worth the purchase price. This is the third Gellhorn book I've read as well as her biography and now that I'm finished I find I miss her as though she were actually someone I know. Very sharp descriptions of war following troop movements if not directly on the front lines. Her articles are full of Martha and her opinions. Good stuff. Also check out Gellhorn, The Face of War and Travels with Myself and Another.

Martha Gellhorn was born in St. Louis on November 8, 1908 and died on February 15, 1998 in London, England. Like Dorothy Thompson, she was a pioneering woman journalist who had to go to Europe in order to break into the male-dominated field of journalism. In 1930, determined to become a foreign correspondent, she went to France for two years where she worked at the United Press bureau in Paris. She became a woman journalist who was considered one of the 20th century's best war correspondents.

In Germany, she reported back to U.S. readers on the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1938 she witnessed the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. She later covered the Second World War in England, Finland, Burma, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In order to do covert participant observation of the D-Day offensive, she impersonated a stretcher carrier. She said "I followed the war wherever I could reach it." Notably, she was the first journalist to report on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.

Gellhorn published a collection of articles on war titled "The Face of War" (1959), revised it in 1988, and published this companion to it as a collection of her peacetime journalism. She said it is "a selection of articles written during five decades; peacetime reporting. That is to say, the countries in the background were at peace at the moment of writing; not that there was peace on earth".

This companion piece covers America in Depression, Spain after Franco's death during the '70s, and women camping in protest at a British nuclear reactor. Emerging from this collection of her writing is Gellhorn's irascible spirit. Her book should be read along with Peter Kurth's "American Cassandra: The Story of Dorothy Thompson" (1990).

Library Journal says this is "Gellhorn's anthology of articles" I don't think so. None read like articles written during their particular time period. None read like articles any organization would pay money for.

All read like shes writing them from memory after the fact. Some, way after the fact.

Her writing is such... so lacking in substance that you feel she is making it up. It doesn't feel genuine.

I've also read 'Travels with Myself and Another' and wasn't impressed.