Review of Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life and Travels with Myself and Another

I finished reading two books on Martha Gellhorn. One is Caroline Moorehead’s meticulously researched and insightful biography Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life. The second was Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir by Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn was one of the most famous foreign correspondents during the Spanish Civil War, WWII, and Vietnam. She was influenced by her experiences in Spain in the 1930s for her entire life. She knew and mingled with dignitaries all over the world but preferred to tell stories of the downtrodden, the poor, the average soldier, and the innocent people that suffer during war. She detested injustice when she saw it. Moorehead tells of Gellhorn’s love-hate relationship/marriage to Ernest Hemmingway and her struggle to break from his long shadow. She explains Gellhorn’s search for happiness that she never quite achieved despite her tremendous success as both a journalist and author. Gellhorn was a modern woman by all standards during an era when modern women weren’t quite accepted. Moorehead’s book also gives the reader excellent background material on the Spanish Civil War, pre-war Europe, and WWII that one typically doesn’t find in traditional history books. Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir is Gellhorn's accounts of her travels to the interior of China in 1941, the Caribbean islands in 1942 in search of German U-Boats, a trek from west to east Africa in the immediate post colonial era of 1962, and Russia in 1972. The memoir is quite funny as it tells of everything that can go wrong and does go wrong when one travels abroad in areas of the world that lack conveniences and accommodations. Both are excellent reads.