Information AboutJohn Gunther |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT JOHN GUNTHER | |
| 1901 births | |
| gunther, john | |
| 1970 deaths | |
| american memoirists | |
| american novelists | |
| american political writers | |
| cancer deaths | |
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PERSONAL LIFE Gunther grew up in Chicago and attended the University Of Chicago , where he was literary editor of the student paper. From 1924 to 1936, Gunther was assigned to the London bureau of the Chicago Daily News . Gunther writes, "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." John Gunther: Abbreviated profile from World Authors 1900-1950 . Accessed 4 July 2007. Gunther married journalist Frances Fineman in 1927. Personal Information for Frances Fineman Gunther , Jewish Women's Archive. Accessed 4 July 2007. Their first child, a daughter, Judith, died suddenly at the age of four months. Their son John Gunther, Jr. (Johnny) was born in 1929. John and Frances Gunther divorced in 1944. Gunther married Jane Perry Vandercook in 1948 and the couple adopted a son. WRITINGS The books that made Gunther famous in his time were the "Inside" series of continental surveys. For each book, Gunther travelled extensively through the area the book covered, interviewed political, social, and business leaders, and reviewed area statistics, then wrote a lengthy overview of what he had learned and how he interpreted it. The books in the series:
About ''Inside Europe'', Gunther wrote, "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." In addition to the "Inside" series, Gunther wrote eight novels and three biographies, most notably ''Bright Nemesis'', ''The Troubled Midnight'', ''Roosevelt in Retrospect'' (published in 1950) and ''Eisenhower'', a biography of the famous general released in 1952, the year Eisenhower was elected President . The book for which Gunther is best remembered today, however, does not deal with the intrigues of politics: ''Death Be Not Proud'' is the story of his son, Johnny, who died of a brain tumor at the age of 17. In the book, the elder Gunther details the struggles that he and his ex-wife went through in attempting to save their son's life: the many treatments pursued (everything from radical surgery to strictly controlled diet), the ups and downs of apparent remission and eventual relapse, and the strain it placed on all three of them. Gunther portrays his son as a remarkable young man – he corresponded intelligently with Albert Einstein about physics – and the heartbreak of his death is told so movingly by Gunther that the book became a best-seller, and has subsequently been filmed. It is a staple of many high-school curricula to this day. seventeen yr old boy died of a brain tumor. It tells of his illness, his acceptance at Harvard, and of the courage and wit of his last months. DEATH AND REMEMBRANCE John Gunther died in New York on May 29, 1970 after being diagnosed with cancer for two weeks. ''Inside: The Biography of John Gunther'' (Bonus Books, Chicago) by Canadian author Ken Cuthbertson was released in 1992. LIST OF WORKS Nonfiction
Novels
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