Ernie Pyle's War : America's Eyewitness to World War II - James Tobin

Ernie Pyle's War

America's Eyewitness to World War II

By: James Tobin

Paperback | 7 June 2006 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback


$39.90

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.97 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

When a machine-gun bullet ended the life of war correspondent Ernie Pyle in the final days of World War II, Americans mourned him in the same breath as they mourned Franklin Roosevelt. To millions, the loss of this American folk hero seemed nearly as great as the loss of the wartime president.

If the hidden horrors and valor of combat persist at all in the public mind, it is because of those writers who watched it and recorded it in the faith that war is too important to be confined to the private memories of the warriors. Above all these writers, Ernie Pyle towered as a giant. Through his words and his compassion, Americans everywhere gleaned their understanding of what they came to call “The Good War.”

Pyle walked a troubled path to fame. Though insecure and anxious, he created a carefree and kindly public image in his popular prewar column—all the while struggling with inner demons and a tortured marriage. War, in fact, offered Pyle an escape hatch from his own personal hell.

It also offered him a subject precisely suited to his talent—a shrewd understanding of human nature, an unmatched eye for detail, a profound capacity to identify with the suffering soldiers whom he adopted as his own, and a plain yet poetic style reminiscent of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. These he brought to bear on the Battle of Britain and all the great American campaigns of the war—North Africa, Sicily, Italy, D-Day and Normandy, the liberation of Paris, and finally Okinawa, where he felt compelled to go because of his enormous public stature despite premonitions of death.

In this immensely engrossing biography, affectionate yet critical, journalist and historian James Tobin does an Ernie Pyle job on Ernie Pyle, evoking perfectly the life and labors of this strange, frail, bald little man whose love/hate relationship to war mirrors our own. Based on dozens of interviews and copious research in little-known archives, Ernie Pyle's War is a self-effacing tour de force. To read it is to know Ernie Pyle, and most of all, to know his war.
Industry Reviews
"This is the portrait of a complex, enormously gifted but tortured writer . . . but it is much more: few books about combat journalism have so vividly depicted the fascinating interactions between war correspondents, soldiers and folks back home. . . . World War II was quintessentially Ernie Pyle's war, and Mr. Tobin brilliantly explains why." -- The New York Times Book Review

More in Biographies

Emperor of the Seas : Kublai Khan and the Making of China - Jack Weatherford
Source Code : My Beginnings - Bill Gates

RRP $55.00

$35.00

36%
OFF
Gutsy Girls : Love, Poetry and Sisterhood - Josie McSkimming
Memorial Days - Geraldine Brooks

Hardcover

RRP $32.99

$21.95

33%
OFF
Iron Hope : Lessons Learned from Conquering the Impossible - James Lawrence
Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life : Our July Book of the Month - Anna Funder
Love Stories - Trent Dalton

Hardcover

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Tina : The Dog Who Changed the World - Niall Harbison

RRP $34.99

$31.75

The Last Lecture : Lessons in Living - Randy Pausch
Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E Frankl