John Gunther (publicist)
John Gunther (born August 30, 1901 - May 29, 1970 ) was an American author and journalist. He was particularly successful in the 1930s to 1950s, his Inside Books , non-fiction books on the socio-political issues of the major continents , became famous . Most famous, however, was Death Be Not Proud , a book about the death of his son who had died of a brain tumor.
Life
Gunther grew up in Chicago and studied at the University of Chicago , where he also edited the student newspaper. From 1924 to 1936 he was in contact with the London office of the Chicago Daily News . He occasionally worked as a correspondent for the Daily News in London, Berlin , Vienna , Moscow , Rome and Paris , also visited Poland , Spain , Scandinavia and toured the Balkans . With Dorothy Thompson and GER Gedye , Gunther was one of the top Anglo-Saxon journalists of the interwar period. He has worked in every country in Europe except Portugal and witnessed the development of the continent from 1924 to 1936.
Gunther married the journalist Frances Fineman in 1927. Their first child, a daughter, Judith, died suddenly at the age of four months. Their son John Gunther Junior was born in 1929. Johnny died of a brain tumor at the age of 17. John Gunther's book Death Be Not Proud is about Johnny's life. After divorcing Frances in 1948, Gunther married Jane Perry Vandercook and the couple adopted a son.
Works
The books that made Gunther famous in his day were those from the Inside series about observing the continents. For each book, Gunter traveled extensively around the area the book was about, interviewing political, social and business leaders, talking to ordinary people, and writing a long synopsis of what he had learned and how he interpreted it. The books:
- Inside Europe (1936)
- Inside Asia (1939)
- Inside Latin America (1941)
- Inside USA (1947)
- Inside Africa (1955)
- Inside Russia Today (1958)
- Inside Europe Today (1961)
- Inside South America (1967)
- Inside Australia and New Zealand (1972)
Gunther wrote about Inside Europe : “This book had a resounding success all over the world. I was fortunate that it appeared at just the right time when the three totalitarian dictators took the stage and people were very interested in them. "
In addition to the Inside series, Gunther wrote eight novels and three biographies, most notably Bright Nemesis , The Troubled Midnight , Roosevelt in Retrospect (published 1950) and Eisenhower , a biography of the famous general, published in 1952, the year Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President of the United States .
The book that best remembers Gunther, however, is not about intrigue and politics: Death Be Not Proud is the story of his son Johnny, who died of a brain tumor at the age of 17. In the book, Father Gunther describes the struggles he and his ex-wife went through trying to save their son's life: the many treatments attempted (everything from radical surgery to strictly controlled diets), the ups and downs of apparent improvement and eventual breakdown and the suffering it has meant for all three.
Gunther portrays his son as a remarkable young man; he had an intelligent correspondence on physics with Albert Einstein , and the son's heart-wrenching death is so touchingly reported that the book became a bestseller. In 1975 it became an Emmy-nominated television film , with Arthur Hill (actor) as John Gunther, Jane Alexander as his wife, and Robby Benson as Johnny. It is still featured in many high school curricula to this day.
A Broadway theater turned Inside USA into a revue in 1948, with songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz . It was performed 399 times.
Non-fiction
- (1936) Inside Europe
- (1938 ed.) Inside Europe (minor changes)
- (1939 ed.) Inside Europe (minor changes)
- (1939) The High Cost of Hitler
- (1939) Inside Asia
- (1940 Ed.) Inside Europe (major additions and changes due to the geopolitical consequences of Hitler and Nazi Germany)
- (1941) Inside Latin America
- (1944) D-Day
- (1947) Inside USA
- (1949) Death Be Not Proud , memoir
- (1949) Behind the Curtain (published in Great Britain under the title Behind Europe's Curtain )
- (1950) Roosevelt in Retrospect: A Profile in History , biography
- (1951) The Riddle of MacArthur : Japan, Korea, and the Far East
- (1952) Eisenhower, the Man and the Symbol , biography
- (1953) Alexander the Great , biography
- (1955) Inside Africa
- (1956) Days to Remember: America, 1945–1955 (with B. Quint)
- (1958) Inside Russia Today
- (1961) Inside Europe Today
- (1965) Procession
- (1967) Inside South America
- (1969) Twelve Cities
- (1972) John Gunther's Inside Australia and New Zealand (with WH Forbis), ISBN 0-241-02180-4
Novels
- (1926) The Red Pavilion
- (1927) Peter Lancelot: An Amusement
- (1926) Eden for One: An Amusement
- (1929) The Golden Fleece
- (1932) Bright Nemesis
- (1945) The Troubled Midnight
- (1964) The Lost City (German: Die verlorene Stadt , Molden, Vienna 1964; from Red Vienna to the Austrian Civil War 1934 )
- (1970) The Indian Sign (published in the UK under the title Quatrain )
Individual evidence
- ^ John Gunther: Abbreviated profile from World Authors 1900-1950 . Accessed July 4, 2007.
- ^ Personal Information for Frances Fineman Gunther , Jewish Women's Archive. Accessed July 4, 2007.
- ^ IBDB: The official source for Broadway Information
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gunther, John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American author and journalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 30, 1901 |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 29, 1970 |