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GUNTHER, JOHN (August 30, 1901-May 29, 1970)
American
journalist and novelist, wrote: "I have devoted myself for twenty years to writing of
some sort or other. My bent has been toward journalism from the beginning. I was a Chicago
boy, educated in the public schools there, and I remember writing pieces about the Russian
Revolution and so on even when I was in high school. At college (the University of
Chicago) I was the literary editor of the campus paper, the Daily Maroon. I had
several articles published in national magazines like Smart Set and Bookman
while I was still an undergraduate. I went to Europe for the Chicago Daily News in
1924 and worked for the News there for twelve years. I had exceptionally good luck
in that for a long time I was used as a kind of swing man,' taking charge of various
bureaus while the senior correspondents were away, and then covering various special news
stories in between. Thus I was at one time or another in charge of Daily News
offices in London, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Rome, and Paris, and I also visited Poland,
Spain, the Balkans, and Scandinavia. I have worked in every European country except
Portugal. I saw at first hand the whole extraordinary panorama of Europe from 1924 to
1936. I was lucky enough to have a ringside seat for almost the entire spectacle.
"In 1936 I wrote Inside Europe, which drew on
these experiences. This book has had a striking success all over the world. I was
fortunate in that it appeared at just the right time, when the three totalitarian
dictators took the stage and people began to be vitally interested in them. Inside
Europe has been repeatedly revised and republished. . . .
"As a serious political journalist I decided even before
Inside Europe became so widely known to extend my work with an analagous survey of
Asia, and so I spent most of 1937 and 1938 traveling in Asia and then writing about it. I
am hoping to do a third book of the same general nature about the United States. My basic
idea is to attempt to draw a kind of political map or chart of the contemporary American
world."
Principal Works: Novels--The Red Pavilion, 1926;
Peter Lancelot: An Amusement, 1927; Eden for One: An Amusement, 1927; The Golden Fleece,
1929; The Bright Nemesis, 1932; The Troubled Midnight, 1945; The Lost City, 1964; The
Indian Sign, 1970 (in U.K.: Quatrain). Journalistic and political works--Inside
Europe, 1936; The High Cost of Hitler, 1939; Inside Asia, 1939; Inside Latin America,
1941; D Day, 1944; Inside U.S.A., 1947; Behind the Curtain, 1949 (in U.K.: Behind Europe's
Curtain); Inside Africa, 1955; (with B. Quint) Days to Remember: America, 1945-1955, 1956;
Inside Russia Today, 1958; Inside Europe Today, 1961; Procession, 1965; Inside South
America, 1967; Twelve Cities, 1969; (with W. H. Forbis) John Gunther's Inside Australia,
1972. Biography--Roosevelt in Retrospect: A Profile in History, 1950; The Riddle of
MacArthur: Japan, Korea, and the Far East, 1951; Eisenhower, the Man and the Symbol, 1952.
About: The autobiographical material quoted above was written
for Twentieth Century Authors, 1942. Contemporary Authors Vols. 9-12, 1974; Current
Biography 1941 and 1961; Cuthbertson, K. Inside: The Biography of John Gunther, 1992;
Dictionary of American Biography, Suppl. 8, 1988; Heald, M. Transatlantic Vistas: American
Journalists in Europe, 1900-1940, 1988.
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