The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, History, Reference
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, History, Reference
Book Type: Hardcover
I read a lot of history books about women, especially from our nation's early history. If you don't, then you miss out on 50% of history. So I was really looking forward to this book, as it was about women correspondents in World War II, another of my favorite reading subjects.
The author did a good job covering these exceptional women from before World War II, through the war, and on until each died. You sometimes had to wonder about the restrictions they faced, simply because of their sex. Today, we have women at all levels of government and business, even though they are still under-represented. And their adventures... Wow! You'll just have to read the book to learn about them.
But once again I encountered my "favorite" annoyance about authors who have no knowledge of the historical background of the period they are writing about and can't bother to check their facts.
For example, the author claims---on page 292---that in December. 1944, the Allied front in the Ardennes was defended by just "...three and a half armored divisions." If that had been true, the Germans would never have attacked there. Instead, it was three infantry divisions, two of which were recovering from heavy loses on another front and one which just arrived to its first combat area. To make it even worse, she then states, "Within days, four of the five [Allied] armies had become encircled...", when actually it was just a corps which was forced back, and a corps is just one part of an army.
Another time she says German bombers, "...attacked a press camp, mistaking it for a military site." Well, when you are close to the front and your area has military tents and vehicles, expect to be bombed. When these errors occur in a book I read, I begin to wonder what other falsehoods the author wrote which I didn't discover.
But the part I disliked the worst, and why I didn't give the book 5 stars, is that she must be a subscriber to the "sex sells" concept of writing. This because she begins from the mid-point of the book to cover in detail the love lives of all the female correspondents to the point where it makes most of them look like sex reporters from a porno magazine. The author also covers the rape of German women by the Russian soldiers, even when the book's female correspondents aren't within a hundred miles of those activities.
The author covers both these areas whens she claims one of the book's correspondents had an affair with General Jame Gavin of the 82nd Airborne Division. He supposedly proposed to her and she refused because, "...the idea of setting up home on an American air base with Jim was impossible to contemplate." But that division was an army division and would be stationed at an U.S. Army base. While not a major mistake, it still made me chuckle and told me her knowledge of the military was scant.
All this reminded me of a biography of a major personality where the author covered that person's sex life in such depth, that, in addition to problems with other material in the book, it became very obvious the author was making it all up as he went along.
I think the author here---a women herself---did these gallant correspondents a disservice. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe these women would document this sexual behavior in the hopes someone would write their biographies, as this is what they wanted to be remembered for. It wouldn't be the first time an author made up material to sell a book. And I'm not talking about novels.
The author did a good job covering these exceptional women from before World War II, through the war, and on until each died. You sometimes had to wonder about the restrictions they faced, simply because of their sex. Today, we have women at all levels of government and business, even though they are still under-represented. And their adventures... Wow! You'll just have to read the book to learn about them.
But once again I encountered my "favorite" annoyance about authors who have no knowledge of the historical background of the period they are writing about and can't bother to check their facts.
For example, the author claims---on page 292---that in December. 1944, the Allied front in the Ardennes was defended by just "...three and a half armored divisions." If that had been true, the Germans would never have attacked there. Instead, it was three infantry divisions, two of which were recovering from heavy loses on another front and one which just arrived to its first combat area. To make it even worse, she then states, "Within days, four of the five [Allied] armies had become encircled...", when actually it was just a corps which was forced back, and a corps is just one part of an army.
Another time she says German bombers, "...attacked a press camp, mistaking it for a military site." Well, when you are close to the front and your area has military tents and vehicles, expect to be bombed. When these errors occur in a book I read, I begin to wonder what other falsehoods the author wrote which I didn't discover.
But the part I disliked the worst, and why I didn't give the book 5 stars, is that she must be a subscriber to the "sex sells" concept of writing. This because she begins from the mid-point of the book to cover in detail the love lives of all the female correspondents to the point where it makes most of them look like sex reporters from a porno magazine. The author also covers the rape of German women by the Russian soldiers, even when the book's female correspondents aren't within a hundred miles of those activities.
The author covers both these areas whens she claims one of the book's correspondents had an affair with General Jame Gavin of the 82nd Airborne Division. He supposedly proposed to her and she refused because, "...the idea of setting up home on an American air base with Jim was impossible to contemplate." But that division was an army division and would be stationed at an U.S. Army base. While not a major mistake, it still made me chuckle and told me her knowledge of the military was scant.
All this reminded me of a biography of a major personality where the author covered that person's sex life in such depth, that, in addition to problems with other material in the book, it became very obvious the author was making it all up as he went along.
I think the author here---a women herself---did these gallant correspondents a disservice. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe these women would document this sexual behavior in the hopes someone would write their biographies, as this is what they wanted to be remembered for. It wouldn't be the first time an author made up material to sell a book. And I'm not talking about novels.
