Witness to a Century: Encounters with the Noted, the Notorious, and the Three SOBs

Rating:
Summary: Liberal Press? Thank God.
Review: For all those screaming about the liberal press, I say Thank God. If you don't agree, you don't know the facts, or don't want to acknowledge the facts. Read this book and you will never again complain about liberal reporters all of whom work for conservative publishers. Thank God for GeorgeSeldes and his courage to tell the truth about a Century of fighting against the takeover of our democracy by fascism.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, Readable, Informative
Review: Seldes primarily describes his years as a foreign correspondent in this solid memoir. Seldes began as a cub reporter for the Pittsburgh Leader in 1909, but was soon overseas covering World War One, and then Weimar Germany, Bolshevik Russia, Fascist Italy, and the Spanish Civil War. I liked the author's analysis, not to mention his portraits of such figures as Generals Pershing and Hindenburg, Mussolini, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. Seldes scorns the era's conservative publishers for failing to cover many important issues, a problem he combated with his newsletter IN FACT from 1940-50. Sadly, today's corporate media barons also avoid certain issues. I gave the book four stars because the last chapters tend to fade - Seldes wrote them while in his mid-90's. Still, WITNESS TO A CENTURY provides an excellent look at many events that helped shape today's world.

George Seldes (1890-1995) was an outstanding journalist, one who respected truth until the day he passed at age 104. As his obituary noted, nearly until the end he was still discussing world events with admirers who phoned or visited his home in rural Vermont.

Rating:
Summary: Apt Title
Review: The author George Seldes is a name unknown to the vast majority of Americans, including those who read newspapers. Yet his pioneering newsletter In Fact, along with a supreme dedication to jounalistic integrity and Jeffersonian ideals, qualify him as one of the key journalists of the 20th century. He set the standards that many liberal muckrakers of today work to emulate, including, for example, the late and more widely known I.F. Stone.

The book's title Witness to a Century is an apt one. As a foreign correspondent, he had an uncanny knack for being at the right places at the right time while history was being made. His recollections of such key figures as Mussolini, Lenin, Tito, Mc Carthy, Roosevelt, and others are priceless. It's doubtful that any one person non-head of state met with as many shapers of history as Seldes, even as the book profiles his many encounters with cultural figures of the day: Picasso, Sinclair Lewis, Ford Maddox Ford, and the Paris literary scene of the 1920's. With this stellar background, readers could expect an exceptional reminiscence on the century past. However, I was somewhat disappointed in the result. Fellow reviewer Goldberg points out how the last two chapters tend to fade, and he is correct. In fact, the book as a whole seems rather loose and disjointed, with little segue from one chapter to the next other than a rough timeline. And while many of the personal portraits remain vivid and edifying--von Hindenburg weeping over Germany's defeat by fresh American troops--the work as a whole is the result of a distinguished journalist past his prime. Still and all, his observations on the press reporting of his day may surprise some readers. Managed news accounts, the result of kowtowing to wealth and power, was even more flagrant in his day than now, suggesting, I suppose, some refinement of method. There is material here for several volumes, and I suspect that were he 20 years younger, such would have been the result. As it stands, the work is more a compilation of loose snapshots, than in-depth portraits.

Nonetheless, no historian of the 20th century, amateur or professional, can afford to pass up such primary material. Seldes was not only an outstanding jounalist, but as the record shows, an outstanding American as well. Regretably, his like seems to have faded from the scene, leaving mainstream journalism to generation after generation of pack-following pygmies.