Still Time to Live A Biography of Jack Belden Gary G Yerkey 9780615458885 Books
Download As PDF : Still Time to Live A Biography of Jack Belden Gary G Yerkey 9780615458885 Books
This first-ever biography of TIME-LIFE correspondent Jack Belden, who covered war and only war from China, Burma, North Africa and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, is the fast-paced story of an American original. We see him jumping ship in Hong Kong at age 23 to report on the growing conflict between China and Japan, then fighting his way back to the front lines after being seriously wounded at Salerno, only to be wounded again, perhaps irreparably, by the ravages of McCarthyism. It is also the story of a young man falling in love with his American nurse in North Africa, losing track of her after the war and reconnecting with her again in Paris nearly 50 years later in the final few weeks of his life. His reporting resulted in three books -- "Still Time to Die," "Retreat With Stilwell," and "China Shakes the World," his classic account of the Chinese civil war. His friend and colleague Edgar Snow called him “mad and gifted.” Wrote the Asia scholar Owen Lattimore “Jack Belden was a legendary figure.... He was one of the great war correspondents.
Still Time to Live A Biography of Jack Belden Gary G Yerkey 9780615458885 Books
This biography of Jack Belden is long overdue and all interested in the profession of war reporting are deeply indebted to Mr. Yerkey for writing it. That Mr. Yerkey actually knew Jack Belden in Paris during his forced retirement from journalism adds much authenticity to this biography. That Mr. Belden lived as long as he did is a wonder considering the chances he took to cover the war news in China (beginning in 1937), Burma, Italy, and France during WWII; in Italy he was severely wounded by enemy gunfire. In China and later in Burma he got his stories from the front lines. His analysis of what went wrong in Burma, RETREAT WITH STILWELL (1943), is one of the most lucid and penetrating accounts by an on-site observer of that disaster ever written and Belden topped it off when he walked out of Burma into India with "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's party, the only correspondent who did. Belden could've flown out, as did every other correspondent but it was not in his nature to lose a story to save his skin.(I wonder why Mr. Yerkey did not even touch upon the brief relationship Belden says he had with Than Shwe, a Burmese nurse with Gordon Seagrave's hospital unit that accompanied Stilwell on his retreat out of Burma? If anyone ever makes a movie out of RETREAT WITH STILWELL, that scene's gotta be in there! In fact as good as they are, neither Frank Dorn's nor Gordon Seagraves' account of Stilwell's epic adventure can come close to Jack Belden's writing that actually puts you into the jungle with him and the other 113 refugees struggling to escape the Japanese juggernaut.)
Belden's independent spirit eventually got him into trouble with editors and publishers and his perceived "sympathy" for the Chinese Communists some read into Belden's masterpiece, CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD (1949), which I think Mr. Yerkey successfully demonstrates was a misperception engendered by the hysteria of the McCarthy years, drove him into unemployment and eventually exile in Paris where in 1989 at age 79 he died of cancer, penniless and forgotten except by a few friends. Far lesser contemporaries of his profession went on to fame and adulation but Jack Belden got none of that.
STILL TIME TO LIVE (a play on Belden's STILL TIME TO DIE (1944)) is a handsome book, well bound, attractive covers, a crisp font that is easy to read, but it contains no photos, maps, or illustrations of any kind that one expects in a biography of a major literary figure. I believe this is because STILL TIME TO LIVE is an ebook and its publisher, GK Press, is Mr. Yerkey himself. Ebook authors are on their own when it comes to editing and layout. Authors make the worst editors of their own stuff because cutting the text to them is like hacking off their own limbs. So beware of the glitches, words left out, text missing, footnotes out of sequence, all tiny errors that creep in even when professional copy editors work on a text, but they do make parts of this otherwise wonderful book like traveling down a bumpy road at high speed. But the ride is worth it.
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Still Time to Live A Biography of Jack Belden Gary G Yerkey 9780615458885 Books Reviews
Belden had been in China in the 1930s, and when he returned after the war ended in 1945, he went out into the villages to see for himself why the communists were expanding. He reports on their strengths in building local governments and their use of terror. He builds his argument about Mao's revolution by showing that it was top down, while the village revolution was coming from the bottom up. Belden was complicated, and Yerkey builds a believable portrait of him both as a reporter and a man.
A first rate biography, finally, of an important war correspondent and author, too often neglected until now -- and also an unusual love story.
Gary Yerkey's vivid portrait of war correspondent Jack Belden in Still Time to Live reminded me why I became a journalist myself many years ago. Yerkey's ground-level view of war and history through the eyes of Belden and his fellow war correspondents also shows why writing the truth can be just as dangerous as being caught in the middle of a battle as Belden often was. From the World War II fighting in China, North Africa, Italy and France to the behind the scenes politics of generals and the State Department, Belden's story as told by Yerkey is a great read and great history.
This biography of Jack Belden is long overdue and all interested in the profession of war reporting are deeply indebted to Mr. Yerkey for writing it. That Mr. Yerkey actually knew Jack Belden in Paris during his forced retirement from journalism adds much authenticity to this biography. That Mr. Belden lived as long as he did is a wonder considering the chances he took to cover the war news in China (beginning in 1937), Burma, Italy, and France during WWII; in Italy he was severely wounded by enemy gunfire. In China and later in Burma he got his stories from the front lines. His analysis of what went wrong in Burma, RETREAT WITH STILWELL (1943), is one of the most lucid and penetrating accounts by an on-site observer of that disaster ever written and Belden topped it off when he walked out of Burma into India with "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's party, the only correspondent who did. Belden could've flown out, as did every other correspondent but it was not in his nature to lose a story to save his skin.
(I wonder why Mr. Yerkey did not even touch upon the brief relationship Belden says he had with Than Shwe, a Burmese nurse with Gordon Seagrave's hospital unit that accompanied Stilwell on his retreat out of Burma? If anyone ever makes a movie out of RETREAT WITH STILWELL, that scene's gotta be in there! In fact as good as they are, neither Frank Dorn's nor Gordon Seagraves' account of Stilwell's epic adventure can come close to Jack Belden's writing that actually puts you into the jungle with him and the other 113 refugees struggling to escape the Japanese juggernaut.)
Belden's independent spirit eventually got him into trouble with editors and publishers and his perceived "sympathy" for the Chinese Communists some read into Belden's masterpiece, CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD (1949), which I think Mr. Yerkey successfully demonstrates was a misperception engendered by the hysteria of the McCarthy years, drove him into unemployment and eventually exile in Paris where in 1989 at age 79 he died of cancer, penniless and forgotten except by a few friends. Far lesser contemporaries of his profession went on to fame and adulation but Jack Belden got none of that.
STILL TIME TO LIVE (a play on Belden's STILL TIME TO DIE (1944)) is a handsome book, well bound, attractive covers, a crisp font that is easy to read, but it contains no photos, maps, or illustrations of any kind that one expects in a biography of a major literary figure. I believe this is because STILL TIME TO LIVE is an ebook and its publisher, GK Press, is Mr. Yerkey himself. Ebook authors are on their own when it comes to editing and layout. Authors make the worst editors of their own stuff because cutting the text to them is like hacking off their own limbs. So beware of the glitches, words left out, text missing, footnotes out of sequence, all tiny errors that creep in even when professional copy editors work on a text, but they do make parts of this otherwise wonderful book like traveling down a bumpy road at high speed. But the ride is worth it.
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