Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, By Robert H. Patton. A work may obligate you to consistently improve the expertise as well as experience. When you have no sufficient time to boost it straight, you can get the experience and knowledge from reading the book. As everyone knows, publication Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, By Robert H. Patton is preferred as the window to open the globe. It indicates that checking out book Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, By Robert H. Patton will give you a brand-new way to discover every little thing that you require. As the book that we will provide right here, Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, By Robert H. Patton
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton
PDF Ebook Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton
From acclaimed historian Robert H. Patton, author of The Pattons and Patriot Pirates, a rediscovery and celebration of America’s first chroniclers of foreign war. The first war correspondent, William H. Russell of The Times of London, described himself and his profession as “the miserable parent of a luckless tribe.” But it wasn’t long before others saw it differently. Hell Before Breakfast is the spectacular tale of larger-than-life Americans who made it their business to bring back news from the front; from Bull Run to the Paris Commune, from Africa to the Ottoman Empire, through decades of lightning-fast technological progress and high adventure. As America matured into a great power and the monarchies of Europe battled for dominance through a series of brief, bloody imperial wars, with the storm clouds of World War I drawing rapidly closer, these men and their newspapers were at center stage—the vanguard of a golden age of war correspondence.
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton- Amazon Sales Rank: #3200501 in Books
- Brand: Patton, Robert H.
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Released on: 2015-06-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.97" h x .73" w x 5.17" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
From Publishers Weekly "Patton focuses on the war correspondent persona and the band of bold adventurers who earned their keep on the frontlines in this detailed salute. Patton's tribute to these battlefield scribes revives an understanding of why these men mattered.""Colorful . . . outrageous . . . powerful . . . Sometimes vivid writing needs no technology other than words." -- The Washington Post "[A] lively look at the emergence of America's first war correspondents and their dispatches from the front lines. . . . Patton's spirited chronicle evokes a lost age of journalism." -- The Boston Globe"Highly entertaining . . . Patton tells the story of the early years of [war correspondence] and its practitioners with considerable gusto, for he has a great tale—actually, any number of great tales—to tell." -The Wall Street Journal
From Booklist Between 1860 and 1910, when the world was engaged in conflicts from the U.S. Civil War to the Spanish-American War, adventurists and enterprising war correspondents, many of them now lost in obscurity, brought the news to the American public. Patton records the spirit of adventure as the new technology of the telegram allowed intrepid reporters to share the news more widely and faster than before, influencing political decisions about war as the public judged the effectiveness of war strategies and the wisdom of some conflicts. Times of London reporter William Howard Russell’s accounts of the carnage of the Crimean War prompted Florence Nightingale to bring volunteers to the front to treat wounded soldiers. Others, including Henry Villard and the New York Tribune’s George Smalley and Holt White, were among the war correspondents who inspired writers and statesmen from Rudyard Kipling to Theodore Roosevelt. Patton offers a fascinating cast of characters as he details major conflagrations and social and technological changes amid the gore of war and the prose of reporters of another era. --Vanessa Bush
Review
“Robert H. Patton paints a vivid picture of those nearly inconceivable times through the eyes of those who wrote about major historical events.”—The Washington Post “A highly entertaining window into a long-lost, quintessentially 19th-century world of wars great and small and of the brave and resourceful men who covered them... Tells the story of the early years of this new profession and its practitioners with considerable gusto… [Patton] is a graceful writer… A great tale.” —The Wall Street Journal“Hell Before Breakfast takes us from the battlefields of Bull Run and Antietam to Europe’s bloodiest pre-World War I conflicts... their intriguing tales, enough for three books, are worthy of resurrection. Patton’s account showcases innovation, bravado, and showmanship... Patton’s spirited chronicle evokes a lost age of journalism.”—Boston Globe“[Patton] tells this story with readability and color that would have made a newspaperman of that era proud… Engrossing.” —New York Journal of Books “Patton follows a dozen of the 19th century's best war correspondents, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the deserts of Central Asia. The portraits -- of American, French, German, Russian and Turkish men and officers -- are sharply drawn, and some of the scoops, like the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ of 1876 still send a chill up the spine.”—Geoffrey Wawro, author of A Mad Catastrophe and Director, University of North Texas Military History Center. “Epic…splendidly written…Patton has once again proven that he is a gifted writer with a keen eye for chronicling their tales in a way that is both entertaining and insightful.”—Carlo D’Este, author of Patton: A Genius For War and Warlord: A Life of Churchill at War, 1874-1945 “A fascinating cast of characters…Patton details major conflagrations and social and technological changes amid the gore of war and the prose of reporters of another era.”—Booklist
Where to Download Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. War reporting is, indeed, a kind of exhilarating hell By Rae A. Francoeur Robert H. Patton’s new book, “Hell Before Breakfast: America’s First War Correspondents Making History and Headlines, from the Battlefields of the Civil War to the Far Reaches of the Ottoman Empire,” is as much of a mouthful, as titles go, as it is a mega-story told with a satisfying surfeit of detail. Every sentence is an adventure.Events featured here — among them the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent Bloody Week in Paris, New York Herald reporter Henry Stanley’s contrived search for Dr. David Livingstone in Africa, the Russian slaughter of a Turkoman tribe called the Yomuds and the Russo-Turkish War — span the years from 1854 through 1912. Whether describing an incident such as the charge of the British Light Brigade in Balaclava’s “valley of death” or the fierce, sometimes comic competition between New York City newspaper publishers like Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett senior and junior, Patton uses incident as context for the personal stories that transform wars from battlefield maneuvers to personal tragedy, moral outrage or euphoric retaliation.War reporting is unlike any other form or journalism and no other way of life. One reporter had his teeth pulled so a toothache wouldn’t render him vulnerable in the mountains and remote deserts. Yet the risks to life and limb are but the most obvious hazards. Add to that the marital strife, the psychological baggage, the sense of disharmony and job instability. No war, no work. And at a certain time in one’s life, riding across the desert on a water-starved horse is no longer an option.For reporters like William Howard Russell and Januarius MacGahan, Archibald Forbes or Frank Millet, passions invoked upon witnessing battle held them fast to their reportorial responsibilities. MacGahan and Stephen Bonsal, in particular, were among those whose moral outrage when seeing unnecessary slaughter or merciless treatment of the injured or imprisoned, sharpened and oriented their narratives. These men befriended great generals like the Russian daredevil Skobelev and great writers like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. They dined with diplomats and they slithered on their bellies between dismembered bodies, ducking bullets.This book, too, is a feat of reporting. It can be read as history, as travel writing of a certain kind, as profiles of those making and recording history and, of course, as an examination of war through the eyes of those covering these wars. Patton, who came up in a family of famed generals, is a very fine writer with a gift for vocabulary and observation. He, too, becomes passionate about his subject matter, such as the intrepid Lady Emily Strangford, who courageously and practically singlehandedly establishes battlefield hospitals and faces down the mean-spirited gossip of her entitled peers.The lack of technology is of great import to this story. Transportation was by horse, train and, in one sad incident, the Titanic. Reporters could not call or email a story into an editor, they had to write it under harrowing conditions and then find a way to get it mailed. This could mean time spent riding away from battle on horseback, boats and trains just to get the story mailed. Stories could take weeks to arrive at their destination. Patton discusses the laying of the first transatlantic cable, which, when finally working, forced cooperation among vying papers in order to reduce exorbitant costs. He also talks about a “beat” in those days being an “exclusive battle dispatch that could be issued in an extra edition and hawked on the street at great profit.”But, at the core of this book are its personalities, my favorite being the impassioned Januarius MacGahan. Handsome, quietly daring, easily swayed by a beautiful woman, as good with royalty as with generals, he was incited by injustice and unafraid to let it show in his work. His life was relatively short but certainly fascinating. Stephen Millet, another starring player here, produced stirring battle accounts and sobering sketches. Later he was to practice his art full time with much commercial success. The publishers featured here, especially the two Bennetts, father and son, are stories all by themselves, with antics ranging from the relentless bullying of a sage Abraham Lincoln to participating in a duel to riding naked through the streets of New York City. Bennett Jr. even made up a sensational fake story about escaped zoo animals to spur a spike in circulation. Their newspaper, the New York Herald, was the most successful, in that era, of all those being published in the United States and Europe.This mega-story is in the right hands with Robert H. Patton. It’s a book meant to claim a place in your bookcase. It’s also a thoroughly entertaining read. It demands time and a pencil for all the margin notes and underlines you are likely to want to make. If you’re using an e-reader, there’s the highlight function that you will become adept using, for there are many memorable lines.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Fascinating look at Journalists and Journalism in the post-Civil War era By A. Debban This book does a lot to illuminate the newspaper reporters, publishers and the conflicts that occupied much of the later half of the 19th Century and are little remembered today. In the course of his narrative, Mr Patton:- Discusses how the Transatlantic Cable success in 1866 led to the ability for news to be relayed from Europe to the U.S. in seconds vice 10 days and drove the need for more immediate reporting- The roles and lifestyles of the James Gordon Bennetts - Junior and Senior - as New York Herald publishers in funding the reporters/adventurers who provided on-the-scene accounts of wars, such as the internal French Paris Commune revolt of 1871, Russian incursions into Central Asia in 1873, and most notably the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878- Individual journalists, such as the still-remembered Englishman / American/ then Englishman again, Henry Morton Stanley, who "found" Dr David Livingstone in Africa- The remarkable career of Januarius MacGahan, who particpated in wars, wrote articles that helped start them (his graphic articles on Turkish atrocities in what became Bulgaria led to the 1877-78 war - he is still recognized as a hero in the struggle for Bulgarian independence from the Ottoman Empire), accompanied an expedition that tried to locate the fabled Northwest Passage, and generally led a life whose adventures would put Indiana Jones to shame.This history of the fascinating characters, principally American, who wrote and made news in the pre-World War I era was a pleasure to read and should be added to the bookshelf of anyone interested in the story of reporters and reporting in the pre-electronic era.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Well Written and Loaded By W. Ames Holbrook I really enjoyed Robert Patton’s previous historical delivery, PATRIOT PIRATES, and when I started reading this I thought, this is good, but I’m not going to enjoy it as much as I did that one. A third of the way in, I began to have doubts about my initial hunch. Two thirds in, I knew I was wrong. Having read the whole thing now, I’m here to announce HELL BEFORE BREAKFAST is even better.In his historical treatment of the wartime newsmen who gave Americans their scoops from the front lines (and who sometimes helped shape and drive those wars), Robert Patton delivers a bonanza of rich and uncommon characters, complete with their eccentricities, failings, triumphs, and connections to the stories they tell. In his portrayals of writers, Robert Patton is of course talking about his own tribe, and this special vantage brings to his subjects dimensions rarely pulled off this well in nonfiction. Adding to the already loaded tapestry, Patton also covers the people in his newsmens’ lives, including their bosses (accounts of the powerful and ego-brimming newspaper owners are a particular treat), lovers, rivals, and the battlefield warriors (my favorite part of the book was the bond that developed between reporter Januarius MacGahan and Russian General Mikhail Skobelev). Nor does Patton stick strictly to the battlefield. War correspondents are his subjects, but the author follows them wherever they go, whether that’s high-society London or remote Tanzania to track down Dr. Livingstone.HELL BEFORE BREAKFAST is excellently plotted and paced, frequently moving, loaded with details, and a whole lot of fun. Five stars.
See all 38 customer reviews... Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. PattonHell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton PDF
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton iBooks
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton ePub
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton rtf
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton AZW
Hell Before Breakfast: America's First War Correspondents, by Robert H. Patton Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar