The Face of War - by Martha Gellhorn (Paperback)

About the Book

A reissue, with a new introduction by Flâneuse author Lauren Elkin, of Martha Gellhorn's enduring collection of war reportage, The Face of War

Book Synopsis

A reissue, with a new introduction by Flâneuse author Lauren Elkin, of Martha Gellhorn's enduring collection of war reportage, The Face of War

Review Quotes

Praise for Martha Gellhorn and The Face of War:

"One of the most fearless, determined and talented journalists ever to have covered wars."-Wall Street Journal

"[Gellhorn was] a heroine to generations of young women correspondents for her fight to get equal treatment and a place on the front lines with male colleagues." --New York Times

"Gellhorn felt her duty as a journalist was to bear witness . . . She told stories not of generals and politicians, but of powerless people--the victims of war."--NPR

"There is a hard, shining, almost cruel honesty to Gellhorn's work that brings back shellshocked Barcelona, Helsinki, Canton and Bastogne--the prelude and crashing symphony of World War II--with almost unbearable vividness."--Guardian (UK)

"A brilliant anti-war book that is as fresh as if written for this morning. Seldom can a correspondent assemble past writings from various locations and watch a clear pattern emerge, yet her pieces fall into place in a grand design. Her opinions, because they are rooted in these finely drawn scenes deserve to be read by many people." --Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

"Martha Gellhorn's courageous, independent-minded reportage breaks through geopolitical abstractions and ideological propaganda to take the reader straight to the scene of the event. Whether she is covering the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Eichmann trial, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, or Central America, there is the same commitment to telling the truth as she has found it, the same sense of moral commitment to the value of human lives, the same fine indignation and passionate outrage at wrongdoing wherever she finds it." --Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor

"First-rate frontline journalism by a woman singularly unafraid of guns." --Vanity Fair

"An eloquent, unforgettable history of a chaotic century." --Jeffrey Rodgers, The San Francisco Chronicle

"Reading Martha Gellhorn for the first time is a staggering experience: How is it possible to have been so ignorant for so long of a writer who has written so passionately about so much--the terrible victory of Franco, the fall of Czechoslovakia, of Poland, the liberation of Paris from the Nazis, the brutality of the civil war in El Salvador? She is not a travel writer, or a journalist or a novelist: She is all of these, and one of the most eloquent witnesses of the twentieth century." --Bill Buford, Granta

"A vivid, militant book by an intense and merciful writer." --Edward Weeks, The Atlantic Monthly

"One of the best correspondents whom the War produced, and today her articles are as fresh as striped shirts returned from the wash." --The New Statesman

"One great value of the book is that to the young who have not known war firsthand it will show the price paid in human misery when men seek to settle their disputes by force." --Saturday Review

"Compelling . . . [Gellhorn's essays] bear witness to horrifying atrocities, but they also delight with lyrical prose, touches of humor and a well-drawn thrill or two that the author experienced firsthand." --Publishers Weekly

"The generous anger, the courage, the energy, and her wonderful voice as a writer: all this makes Gellhorn a national treasure and how she would hate such a label. No other woman has given us such a record of the brutal, and astonishing, events of this century. Once sent to cover a war I had only to read Gellhorn's writing again to understand what should

About the Author

Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She was a war correspondent for Collier's Weekly of New York from 1937 to 1946 and for the Guardian of London from 1966-1967. In addition to her journalism, she wrote seven novels and four short-story collections, receiving an O. Henry Award in 1958. She was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940 to 1946 and T. S. Matthews from 1954 to 1963. Gellhorn lived most of her life in London.