Reviews for Face of War

The average rating for Face of War based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-09-24 00:00:00 Steve Cristofaro The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), author, journalist and famed war correspondent, collects in one volume reports the author had previously written for magazines. The reports are about the wars she covered--the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the Nuremburg Trials, the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, the Indonesian National Revolution, the Six-Day War (the Third Arab-Israeli War), the Vietnam War and finally the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran civil wars of the 1980s. Gellhorn was a journalist over a span of sixty year! The book was originally published in 1959, but successively more has been added. Both the 1959 and 1986 introductions are included in the audiobook version herewith reviewed. The book is about war. It puts a human face on war. That is its intention'not to draw battle strategies, not to speak of those in command, not to speak of those planning wars for attainment of political goals'but of the soldiers fighting the wars and of the civilians slaughtered because they lie in war's path. We are at Dachau. We see what she saw when the concentration camp was liberated. We fly with Gellhorn in a P61 Black Widow night-flying bomber. This book puts each reader right there in the war. Not just one war, but several. Only by experiencing what war is really like does one come to understand the true horror of war. The author wants us to perceive war as it truly is, to feel it in our guts, so united, we will raise our voices against it. Gellhorn gives us Nadezhda Mandelstam's words "If you can do nothing else, you must scream!" You ask who Nadezhda Mandelstam is? Nadezhda Mandelstam was the Russian author, educator and wife of poet Osip Mandelstam. He died in 1938 in a transit camp near Vladivostok. Gellhorn wants to bring to our attention that we each have a duty to perform. We must see that the government we elect takes action against human injustice wherever such occurs. She is telling us to make our voices be heard. Gellhorn writes passionately. She writes to make us care. She writes to incite people to take action. Even when writing of war, she employs humor, albeit of the dark, sarcastic, ironical kind. Quotes jotted down from the book: "Perhaps it Is impossible to understand anything, unless it (has) happened to you." "I do not hope for a world at peace, all of it, all the time. I do not believe in the perfectibility of man, which is what would be required for world peace; I only believe in the human race. I believe the human race must continue." "To see a whole nation passing the buck is not an enlightening spectacle." Seeing the destruction in Cologne: "If you see enough of anything, you stop seeing it." We did not look at each other. "You are ashamed. You are ashamed for mankind." "Either Reagan knows he is lying, or he doesn't know he is lying. Ominous either way!" "On the night of New Year's Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year's resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it." Martha Gellhorn was an intelligent woman. She reasoned logically. She expressed herself well. Some lines are not completely clear. I would ask myself WHO is saying this and WHERE exactly could this be happening, but confusion clears. The confusion arises because the book is a string of separate reports. Gellhorn was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway, married to him from 1940 to 1945. This book Is not autobiographical. She says not a word about Ernest Hemingway, as one thinks she might when speaking of that which she saw and experienced in Madrid in 1937, and in Barcelona in 1938. They were in Spain together. Love and Ruin by Paula McLain is the book that made me interested in reading The Face of War. The books complement each other. Bernadette Dune reads the audiobook very, very well. Steady, even and clear. The strength of the words speak for themselves. Those interested in The Face of War will surely also be interested in War's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich. I want everyone to read The Face of War! It is that good. You will not regret having read it, even if you have already read a zillion books on the Second World War, even if you are already a pacifist and detest war. It should be required reading for all.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-05 00:00:00 Hirohide Miki This curt bit of advice, from the Russian writer (and wife of the poet, Osip Mandelstam) Nadezdha Mandelstam, is one that Martha Gellhorn quotes at the conclusion of the chapter titled "Rule by Terror" in the section titled Wars in Central America (p. 321). It was sage advice (under the then-present circumstances) in Ms. Mandelstam's time; it was sage advice in Ms. Gellhorn's time. It remains sage advice in our time. On pp. 151-152, Ms. Gellhorn writes "On the night of New Year's Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year's resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it." This was something she wrote on the first day of January, 1945, which was over 68 years ago. Things haven't changed much since then ' as Ms. Gellhorn predicted they wouldn't in her coverage of conflicts from the Spanish Civil War up to and through the Reagan's interventions in both El Salvador and Nicaragua. Before I ran across Ms. Mandelstam's suggestion, I originally thought of titling my review "Read this book at your own risk!" ' or "Read this book and weep." Why? Because I suspect you'll feel a similar shame while reading it. Shame as an American, certainly. But also shame as a human being. The history of our species is not a pretty one. And The Face of War begins only with the Spanish Civil War! Martha Gellhorn is no knee-jerk liberal. She's a solid, unflinching liberal ' by conviction. And her conviction is the result of first-person observation, investigation and inquiry. In other words, not of hearsay or conjecture. At the end of May, I read and reviewed Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. In my opinion, that book could sit side by side with this one on the same shelf of woe. Both women are profoundly competent journalists. Both are the kind of journalist we need more of ' unflinching, compassionate and, above all (for those who'd heed their prophetic words), intelligent. I'll risk making the same recommendation I made with The Shock Doctrine. Buy this book and read it cover to cover! As with Ms. Klein's book, we're talking history; but we're also talking (almost) current events. And although Martha Gellhorn is now dead, I feel certain that if she were still alive, she'd be observing, investigating, inquiring and writing about similar atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, was George W. Bush's "shock and awe" qualitatively different from the Nazi doctrine of Schrecklichkeit ("frightfulness")? Since I assume this review will be read ' if at all ' by Americans, I'll conclude it with a quote from p. 281 that speaks to us most directly: "(i)t is not easy to be the citizen of a Superpower, nor is it getting easier. I would feel isolated with my shame if I were not sure that I belong, among millions of Americans, to a perennial minority of the nation (: t)he obstinate bleeding hearts who will never agree that might makes right and (who) know that if the end justifies the means, the end is worthless." R. I. P. at last, Ms. Gellhorn. You've earned it. RRB 07/05/13 Brooklyn, NY