If you want to read something that deals with courage in the face of fire then you might consider The Correspondents by Judith Mackrell. It covers the reality of six women who were reporters and journalists during one of the darkest periods of recent history, the front lines of WWII. Sigrid Schultz was a young woman when she first became an overseas reporter in Berlin in the late 20’s and into the 30’s but she successfully hid her jewish ancestry as she covered the early rise of the Nazi party. Lee Miller had been a model who transitioned into being behind the camera during the 30’s when she worked with Man Ray before becoming a photojournalist during the Blitz. Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles first reported from the front lines of the Spanish Civil war before later covering WWII also from the front lines. Clare Hollingworth worked in Eastern Europe and saw firsthand the early expansion of Germany and the horrible state of the people fleeing. Helen Kirkpatrick was the one who finally broke the gender barrier completely and became the first female reporter to have equal rights and access as the male reporters.
This book was a doozy and remarkably well written. It did an incredible job of detailing exactly what these women faced and saw as they went about doing their job. I don’t just mean in terms of the war either but in terms of societal pressures and misogyny as they repeatedly faced barriers based entirely on their gender and not on their competency or skill. Honestly, I rather admire their fortitude for sticking to it when they could just as easily have said screw it and gone home. They helped set the stage for female war corresponding as we know it today which is huge if you really think about it. Just reading this book you can only imagine the immense amounts of research that must have gone into it. That is just as impressive in its own way. I feel like I learned a lot about this time period and about what it might have been like being a correspondent like that and what it might have been like facing that kind of struggle. The book did a good job of handling all of that without tipping into bias or opinion in any way. My one issue with the book honestly was the narrative structure. Each chapter was focused around certain time frames in certain areas of the war which was nice but it also meant that it frequently flipped between the perspectives of the different women and often with little notice or indication that it was doing so. I sometimes struggled to keep the different women straight in my head because of that. Otherwise the book was really good and even that wasn’t a huge issue if you paid close attention so I am giving this book four out of five stars.
This is a work of nonfiction that focuses on the role of women reporters during WWII. I would think this would appeal to anybody interested in the history of journalism, the history of women and equal rights as well as those interested in WWII. That being said, the book frequently includes graphic descriptions of the war and the fighting as well as some of the concentration camps so if you are thinking of trying this book you might want to keep that in mind. It is not graphic enough I would feel uncomfortable recommending it to younger readers though, provided they are older than about fifteen or sixteen and warned about the subject matter. Hope you consider trying it out and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you do.