This two-volume set is as gripping as the very best fictional thrillers. The writing quality is amazingly good -- perhaps reporters were just better educated in those days, or maybe the drama of the war brought out the very best in them. There is an immediacy to these selections that is lacking from most after-the-fact retrospectives.

The editing is first-rate. Oddly, no one is listed as an editor, so I suppose the credit must go to the four-person Advisory Board. As is typical of Library of America volumes, there are excellent supporting materials at the back of each book -- biographical notes, maps, notes, glossary, and so on -- and the bindings are very high quality.

All in all, these books are wonderful. If you have even a passing interest in history, I strongly recommend them. If you love reading history, they are indispensable.

An amazing collection of the finest pieces written on WWII for the American audience. William Shirer, Ernie Pyle, Ernest Hemingway, Bill Maudlin, etc., covering the earliest moves by the Germans into Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Pacific, African and European theaters, the Eastern Front, the Battle of the Bulge, the campaigns in Italy, the home front, the Battle of Britain, and so on. Remarkable for the quality of the writing and the sense of place and time in every piece. Yes, Americans were told the truth in 1938 about Hitler and the Nazis, and about the Holocaust shortly thereafter. Why did we not do something sooner?

"The Women Who Wrote the War" is a comprehensive compilation and listing of the contribution of women in the press in World War II. From the first women to recognize the changes in Germany, the real threat of Hitler, and to sound the call of the rise of fanaticism, these women had to fight against fear, physical threats and censorship. They also had to work their way around the bias against their sex....often entering dangerous areas with no support or credentials. All arenas of the war were covered by women, from Germany, France and Britian, to the camps in the Far East and Russia. These women were invaluable in providing an acounting of the horrors of war and the human toll it took. They report on all fronts,and unflinchingly look at he horrors of war close up. This book also details the struggle of these women to be accepted, to find their place in a male dominated career. "The Women Who Wrote the War" is a fiting tribute to there trailblazers.

Waging slaughters has traditionally been considered Guy Stuff. So, too, the reporting of them. THE WOMEN WHO WROTE THE WAR, by Nancy Sorel, is the story of the female war correspondents who, working for various U.S. newspapers and wire services, shoved their way to the battlefronts of World War II, making that conflict, especially in its latter stages, the first to be equally reported by both sexes.

By her own admission, the author cut fully half of the female reporter roster from the book so as not to render it unwieldy. Even then, the half remaining is an Honor Roll of the profession: Helen Kirkpatrick, Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Carson, Ruth Cowan, Lee Miller, Martha Gellhorn, Catherine Coyne, Virginia Irwin, Iris Carpenter, Annalee Jacoby, Mary Welsh, Dickey Chapelle, Sonia Tomara, Shelley Mydans, Pat Lochridge, and a host of others too numerous to mention here.

Beginning roughly with the Spanish Civil War, and finishing with the months immediately after WWII, the book's chapters are a series of snapshots in which Sorel's subjects appear or not, depending on their presence in the theater of conflict being described - and they all seem to move around a lot. So, in sequential order, one reads of reporting Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia, the attack on Poland, the fall of France, the Blitz, the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, the war in China, the Japanese capture of the Philippines, the North African and Italian campaigns, D-Day, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, the Pacific islands war, the advance into Germany, the American-Russian link-up, the liberated concentration camps, V-E Day, and, finally, the surrender of Japan.

I can't give WOMEN WHO WROTE THE WAR a 5-star rating because the number of players was too excessive. It would've been better had Sorel focused on, say, just 3 or 4 correspondents in each theater (Europe and the Pacific) as representative of the whole. As it was, so many names kept popping in and out of the narrative that it was hard to "get to know" any one of them, though some are better introduced than others. However, taken as written, this is an admirably comprehensive look at the gutsy ladies that did what they had to do to bring the stories back home to readers in America. For example, Virginia Irwin obtained one of the biggest scoops of the war by deliberately defying a specific SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) restriction on correspondents' movements in a certain area. You go, girl!

If you ever wondered what it was like for Women who were reproters during World War II, then read this book. It traces their pre-war accomplishments, of which there are many, to what it was like for them at the front, or wherever they were. Many were having problems at home so they used work as an escape. Many had to fight to prove they were as good as a man. Some defied regulations to get a story. These women did what few had done before. These are the stories of the women who wrote the war, read them, you will not be dissapointed.

The design team on this book did a wonderful job on packaging the project. Indeed Mr. Sorel is a very talented artist. The book, however, does not reach the level of being a good gift book due to it's lack of content and it is not a good coffee table book either due to the relative obscurity of some people of subject. The collaborative project is notable, and fans of the author and illustrator will surely appreciate it, but it is not a recommended purchase for anyone else.

edward sorel has one of the best drawings on the newpapers, and nancy caldwell, text is wonderfully wit! A high level humour.