Overview

Among journalists—and particularly war correspondents—Homer Bigart was the standard-bearer. Previously available only in crumbling library copies of the Tribune and the Times or in the dusty bins of microfiche repositories, his keen insights into warfare and the minds of those who wage it are now collected in a volume that offers a rare glimpse at a breed of journalist that had already passed into legend by the time of Bigart's death.

Full Product Details

9781557282576

Table of Contents

Reviews

Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart is an exhilarating journey through some of the most dramatic moments of our time. Bigart had the sharpest eye and the greatest stamina among the best of our foreign correspondents. --Kati Marton Generally speaking, a book patched together from old news clippings is a poor candidate for success. The contents of newsroom morgues may be immensely interesting to scholars, but a reader browsing through the average file of some deceased reporter is apt to encounter prose that seems as yellow and decayed as the paper on which it was printed. But Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart is a stunning exception. The 51 battlefield dispatches collected here by Betsy Wade, Homer Bigart's colleague at The New York Times, ring with genuine drama shorn of facile cliches, propaganda and self-congratulation. Assembled in book form, they afford a rare overview of a great journalist's career. --The New York Times, April 1993 Homer Bigart was the greatest war correspondent of his time. Decades after his stories were published in the New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times, the detail of his reporting remains as vivid, his finely crafted prose as taut, as the day the stories were written. To read these stories, rescued from the impermanence of daily newsprint in this splendid book, is to see those wars through his extraordinary eyes. --Neil Sheehan Homer Bigart's reputation as a fearless war correspondent and candid wordsmith ignited a new generation of journalists with the zest to cover Vietnam and the wars since. His intellectual courage in challenging the official line in half a dozen war theaters remains the standard by which all American foreign correspondents measure themselves today. --Peter Arnett

"""Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart is an exhilarating journey through some of the most dramatic moments of our time. Bigart had the sharpest eye and the greatest stamina among the best of our foreign correspondents."" --Kati Marton ""Generally speaking, a book patched together from old news clippings is a poor candidate for success. The contents of newsroom morgues may be immensely interesting to scholars, but a reader browsing through the average file of some deceased reporter is apt to encounter prose that seems as yellow and decayed as the paper on which it was printed. But Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart is a stunning exception. The 51 battlefield dispatches collected here by Betsy Wade, Homer Bigart's colleague at The New York Times, ring with genuine drama shorn of facile cliches, propaganda and self-congratulation. Assembled in book form, they afford a rare overview of a great journalist's career."" --The New York Times, April 1993 ""Homer Bigart was the greatest war correspondent of his time. Decades after his stories were published in the New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times, the detail of his reporting remains as vivid, his finely crafted prose as taut, as the day the stories were written. To read these stories, rescued from the impermanence of daily newsprint in this splendid book, is to see those wars through his extraordinary eyes."" --Neil Sheehan ""Homer Bigart's reputation as a fearless war correspondent and candid wordsmith ignited a new generation of journalists with the zest to cover Vietnam and the wars since. His intellectual courage in challenging the official line in half a dozen war theaters remains the standard by which all American foreign correspondents measure themselves today."" --Peter Arnett"

Author Information

"Betsy Wade (1929-2020) was the first female copyeditor at The New York Times, where she helped prepare the reporting on the Pentagon Papers that won the Times the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She worked with Homer Bigart and was his friend through the later phases of his career. In retirement, he gave her his clipping files to use in preparing a collection of his dispatches. Wade's career began at the Herald Tribune and Scripps-Howard; she headed the Times foreign copy desk in the seventies during the Vietnam War. She later wrote the Times's ""Practical Traveler"" column, the advice from which was published in the New York Times Practical Traveler Handbook. Harrison E. Salisbury (1908-1993) was a longtime reporter and editor at The New York Times, as well as a prolific author. His books include American in Russia and The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. He notably reported from Communist China, Moscow following World War II, and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He was the 1955 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting."

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available