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Last Call at the Hotel Emporium by Deborah Cohen

"Chatty style. Book opens with background of John Gunther. Chicago. Boorish father; educated mother. Chicago of Sandburg. Muscular, self-confident, no nonsense, brash. Gunther goes to U of Chicago, new Univ. striving to make a name for itself. Reporter there, trashes the school in an article. Respects Mencken, reads voraciously, influenced by mother . . . takes off for Europe"
December 26, 2023 – 
 16.0% "Chatty, gossipy tone continues . . . I’m eager to get to rise of Hitler so all these eager reporters become reporters"
December 27, 2023 – 
 20.0% "Politics in Europe are getting murkier as are the lives of the correspondents. Still too gossipy for my tastes. Need a scorecard to keep track of various correspondents and their affairs. Also irritating is Cohen's constant use of first names--Eddie, Jimmy, John, Frances, Dorothy etc. They are clearly "friends" of hers, but inserting the last name every third time would have been helpful."
December 30, 2023 – 
 50.0% "Assassination of Dollfuss on 25 July 1934 by a group of Austrian Nazis,

In his dying moments, Dollfuss asked for the Eucharist administered to a dying person, but his assassins refused to give it to him.[9] Mussolini had no hesitation in attributing the attack to Hitler. Mussolini personally gave the announcement to Dollfuss's widow, who was a guest at his villa in Riccione with her children."
December 30, 2023 – 
 51.0% "Mussolini mobilised a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch. This was the greatest moment of friction between Italian Fascism and National Socialism.

New to me. Taking a break and read 2nd half later. Still too much gossip about the infidelities of the various foreign correspondents for my taste."
January 9, 2024 – 
 61.0% "Reporting on Italy's invasion of Abyssinia. Reporters stuck in Addis Ababa while the Italians attack elsewhere. Modern weaponry against barefoot soldiers with rusty rifles and swords. Hitler/Mussolini no longer at odds. Spanish Civil War starts. Reporters move from "objective" reporting to advocacy reporting. Still too much gossip for me."
January 12, 2024 – 
 95.0% "War ending. Split among writers concerning Soviet Union--can the allies remain allies. Other main topics are Civil Rights movement. Parallels between Nazi description of "prisoners shot trying to escape" and identical phrases used to describe the death of Black prisoners. Riot in Columbia, TN where whites (with police acquiescence if not aid) loot Black stores after "racial incident.""
January 12, 2024 – 
 96.0% "Other post-war contentious issue is India. Churchill. "We're not giving up what is ours." How India is Britain's, he doesn't explain. Gandhi and Nehru succeed, with disaster of partition of India and Pakistan into Muslim/Hindu states. Jim Sheehan present at assassination of Gandhi.
Final section of book revolves around DEATH BE NOT PROUD, the story of John Guenther's son death due to brain tumor."


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