Last Call at the Hotel Imperial

October 1, 2021

Reporting not only on the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact but also the sexual misbehavior of the Brownshirts and Joseph Goebbels's fortune stashed abroad, married foreign correspondents John and Frances Gunther believed that highlighting the personal was as illuminating as reporting on larger historical forces. Northwestern history professor Cohen shows how the Gunthers joined with other U.S. reporters from H.R. Knickerbocker to Dorothy Thompson to fuel a new kind of journalism.

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Starred review from January 10, 2022
Northwestern University historian Cohen (Family Secrets) delivers an evocative portrait of a tight-knit coterie of American journalists who reported from the world’s hot spots from the 1920s through the 1940s. Stationed in European capitals, with forays to Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, H.R. Knickerbocker, Vincent “Jimmy” Sheean, Dorothy Thompson, John Gunther, and his wife, Frances, covered the fall of empires, the spread of communism, and the rise of fascism. Influenced by Freudianism and anti-colonialist struggles, they fashioned “a new kind of journalism, both more subjective and more intimate,” Cohen writes, and stimulated a growing American interest in foreign affairs. Drawing on extensive archival material, Cohen vividly describes the privation Knickerbocker saw in Russia under Stalin’s Five-Year Plan; Thompson’s 1931 sit-down with Hitler, whom she called “the very prototype of the Little Man”; Sheean’s marveling at the “dogged defiance” of ordinary Spaniards during the Spanish Civil War; and the Gunthers’ witnessing of the 1934 July Putsch in Austria. Interwoven with these and other historical events are immersive accounts of the correspondents’ extramarital affairs, divorces, bereavements, and literary endeavors. Striking a masterful balance between the personal and the political, this ambitious and eloquent account brings a group of remarkable people—and their tumultuous era—to vivid life. Agent: Kathy Robbins, the Robbins Agency.

Starred review from February 1, 2022

In the years between the two World Wars, a previously isolationist United States came to be interested and involved in foreign affairs. During the interwar era--driven in no small part by a group of American foreign correspondents for large-circulation newspapers and magazines--the concerns, perspectives, and opinions of politicians and average citizens were influenced and broadened in ways never seen before, argues historian Cohen (Northwestern Univ.; The War Come Home). Although Dorothy Thompson, Jimmy Sheehan, John Gunther, and H.R. Knickerbocker are now unfamiliar names to most, in their day they were at the center of a turbulent period in the '20s and '30s that saw the end of empires and the rise of dictatorial strongmen around the world, many of whom they interviewed. In her engrossing account of this era and the people who did more than simply report facts, Cohen successfully interweaves international events with personal histories, creating a narrative that is well-crafted and comprehensively researched. Based on the voluminous published works of Gunther, Knickerbocker, Sheehan, and Thompson--as well as their letters, notes, diaries, and journals and those of their families, friends, and colleagues--the resulting history is both unique and memorable. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers who enjoy biographies, modern history, and politics.--Linda Frederiksen

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Starred review from March 15, 2022
In this compulsively readable and richly researched group biography, history professor Cohen tackles the personal and professional lives of a small group of daring American journalists who witnessed the world falling apart between the world wars. Holding court in destinations across Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Asia, these foreign correspondents reported on overlooked battles and perilous compromises during a diplomatic period that sustained the thinnest veneer of peace. Drawing on archival discoveries--including private letters (some never sent) and diaries, books, and hundreds of published articles--the author unearths fascinating individuals easily comparable to the more lauded denizens of Bloomsbury and the Algonquin Round Table, including John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson. How a small group of midwesterners, along with their compatriots, became renowned journalists is a tale that must be read to be believed. Cohen relishes each detail, uncovering moments of personal joy and calamity hidden behind the professional accolades and outrage that fueled their coverage of fascism's brutal rise, which many Americans struggled to believe. As smartly written as her subjects could have hoped, Cohen's history stokes fires that blazed a century ago and reverberate still. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is a scorching reminder of how journalism strives to change the world.

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Starred review from March 1, 2022
A scintillating group biography of once-famed journalists who were alternately friends, allies, lovers, and rivals. Of the central ring of reporters Cohen profiles in this excellent ensemble study, only John Gunther is well remembered, mostly for his bestselling 1949 book, Death Be Not Proud. Some second-tier members are better known: William Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), and Rebecca West, author of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941). Yet everyone who passes under Cohen's gaze is fascinating: H.R. Knickerbocker, known as Knick, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Stalin's Russia; Jimmy Sheean, who won the first National Book Award for biography, in 1935; Dorothy Thompson, the first woman to head a foreign news bureau, in Berlin; and Gunther's wife, Frances, an intimate of Jawaharlal Nehru's with a lively command of both the English language and world politics. All produced extraordinary reportage that helped American readers understand the forces leading up to World War II, undertaking considerable risks. As Sheean wrote of Thompson, she excelled because "she could always step over the corpses and go on, steadily, resolutely, right to the end, with her head held very high indeed," while Knick spent a terrifying couple of days sure that he would be executed by "Franco's goons." Cohen's narrative reads like an Alan Furst novel, full of close calls and intrigue--e.g., Gunther had an affair with a Danish journalist who was a guest of Hitler's at the 1936 Olympics, slept with John F. Kennedy, and was suspected of being a spy but really was just "an equal opportunity enchantress." The reporters' prescience was extraordinary, as when Sheean predicted that Gandhi would be killed by another Hindu. Cohen, a professor of humanities at Northwestern, convincingly argues, too, that journalism was the true literature of the interwar period, shaped by outsiders from small towns who wanted to better understand the world. An exceptional book of cultural history that makes one long for the days of teletype, booze, spies, and scoops.

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