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Januarius MacGahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent
Januarius MacGahan (1844?1878) had an incandescent career as a foreign correspondent, covering the Franco-Prussian, Carlist, and Russo-Turkish wars, a Russian incursion into Central Asia, and even an arctic expedition. His reports on the "Bulgarian Atrocities" of 1876 earned him the inscription on his grave marker in New Lexington, "Liberator of Bulgaria.""Dale Walker has done Januarius MacGahan all the honor that has long been due him." [The Smithsonian]"Mr. Walker's research is as impressive as his writing " [Washington Times]"For those who enjoy narrative history, this is a book not to be missed." [Journalism Quarterly]
396 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 5, 2012
Walker shared in an interview once that he was preparing to write this book for over 15 years. MacGahan's journalistic career lasted only 6 years!
But I don't blame Dale Walker. Albeit short, the life and career of Januarius Aloysius MacGahan is the equivalent of the most ambitious bucket list one can ever imagine!
It was filled with trials and tribulations, with love and wars, with travels to far away lands, and danger.
Walker starts at MacGahan's birthplace, New Lexington Ohio, and follows his life and career through the years and over the different continents, with precision and meticulous account of every step he made. MacGahan was probably the most prolific war correspondent of all times. In his short life (he died at the age of 33 in Constantinople of typhus fever) he covered almost every war on the European and Asian continents, traveled to Arctic sea, fought in battles alongside soldiers, almost got himself executed in France, learned 3 or more languages in matter of months, rode through a desert on a horse by himself, got in a verbal fight with one of the most powerful newspaper editors of his time, Gordon Bennett Jr., met the love of his life, and died just before he could see the fruit of his most passionate work to save a small Balkan nation from oppression.
But I don't blame Dale Walker. Albeit short, the life and career of Januarius Aloysius MacGahan is the equivalent of the most ambitious bucket list one can ever imagine!
It was filled with trials and tribulations, with love and wars, with travels to far away lands, and danger.
Walker starts at MacGahan's birthplace, New Lexington Ohio, and follows his life and career through the years and over the different continents, with precision and meticulous account of every step he made. MacGahan was probably the most prolific war correspondent of all times. In his short life (he died at the age of 33 in Constantinople of typhus fever) he covered almost every war on the European and Asian continents, traveled to Arctic sea, fought in battles alongside soldiers, almost got himself executed in France, learned 3 or more languages in matter of months, rode through a desert on a horse by himself, got in a verbal fight with one of the most powerful newspaper editors of his time, Gordon Bennett Jr., met the love of his life, and died just before he could see the fruit of his most passionate work to save a small Balkan nation from oppression.
December 10, 2010
Wanted: A great writer in search of neglected material worthy of his/her attention. Apply at the life story of Januarius MacGahan.
Born in an Ohio farmhouse in 1844 with an ability in languages (his own and foreign), MacGahan went to Europe as a young man with barely the shirt on his back. He ended up covering the great events of the day for major American and British newspapers, acquiring a wide variety of colorful acquaintances and experiences in many lands, marrying a beautiful and devoted Russian aristocrat, and bringing to the attention of the world one of the most appalling massacres of his age, all before dying tragically young. He is, to this day, honored as a hero in an exotic far-off land but lies in Ohio grave, anonymous and forgotten. Doesn't that make you want to drop everything and write a screenplay? Forget it! You're too late! I already know someone who took early retirement from the government of an unnamed superpower in order to write one. Seriously.
Until a writer with an unfashionably grand sense of the sweep and majesty of history comes along, you can make do with this perfectly adequate book. However, the author, an academic, should have resisted the impulse to criticize his hero because the hero's opinions did not meet modern-day expectations of political correctness, meaning specifically that MacGahan sometimes wrote admiringly about both aspiring monarchs and the shape of women's bodies. This might also be the fault of the book's editor, who seemed to be somewhat asleep at the switch in many ways. For example, someone apparently felt it necessary to explain in footnotes what “the Porte” and a ”redoubt” are, yet the following terms are used without explanation: “francs-tireurs”, “rodomontade”, “kibitka”, “aul”, “mitrailleuse”, and “cuirassiers”. What sort of people did the author and editor think would be reading his book?
Still, the author deserves credit for a great deal of original research and apparently convincing MacGahan's skeptical descendants to allow original papers and writings by MacGahan and contemporaries to see the light of day for the first time, nearly a century after his death. In addition, when the author sticks to the story of MacGahan's life, the writing is compelling. MacGahan risks life and limb getting the scoop in wars in Germany, France, and Spain, before setting out in unauthorized and highly dangerous pursuit of the Russian army's adventures in central Asia. He survives an expedition to the Arctic. Most famously, he brings to the attention of the world the Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria, especially the massacre in Batak, causing a reluctant British Empire to reverse its decades-long support of the “Sick Man of Europe”. For this last, streets are named in his honor in Sofia, his name is memorized by thousands of school children for their history tests, and foreign diplomats make yearly trips from Washington, D.C., to his grave site to honor his memory.
Born in an Ohio farmhouse in 1844 with an ability in languages (his own and foreign), MacGahan went to Europe as a young man with barely the shirt on his back. He ended up covering the great events of the day for major American and British newspapers, acquiring a wide variety of colorful acquaintances and experiences in many lands, marrying a beautiful and devoted Russian aristocrat, and bringing to the attention of the world one of the most appalling massacres of his age, all before dying tragically young. He is, to this day, honored as a hero in an exotic far-off land but lies in Ohio grave, anonymous and forgotten. Doesn't that make you want to drop everything and write a screenplay? Forget it! You're too late! I already know someone who took early retirement from the government of an unnamed superpower in order to write one. Seriously.
Until a writer with an unfashionably grand sense of the sweep and majesty of history comes along, you can make do with this perfectly adequate book. However, the author, an academic, should have resisted the impulse to criticize his hero because the hero's opinions did not meet modern-day expectations of political correctness, meaning specifically that MacGahan sometimes wrote admiringly about both aspiring monarchs and the shape of women's bodies. This might also be the fault of the book's editor, who seemed to be somewhat asleep at the switch in many ways. For example, someone apparently felt it necessary to explain in footnotes what “the Porte” and a ”redoubt” are, yet the following terms are used without explanation: “francs-tireurs”, “rodomontade”, “kibitka”, “aul”, “mitrailleuse”, and “cuirassiers”. What sort of people did the author and editor think would be reading his book?
Still, the author deserves credit for a great deal of original research and apparently convincing MacGahan's skeptical descendants to allow original papers and writings by MacGahan and contemporaries to see the light of day for the first time, nearly a century after his death. In addition, when the author sticks to the story of MacGahan's life, the writing is compelling. MacGahan risks life and limb getting the scoop in wars in Germany, France, and Spain, before setting out in unauthorized and highly dangerous pursuit of the Russian army's adventures in central Asia. He survives an expedition to the Arctic. Most famously, he brings to the attention of the world the Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria, especially the massacre in Batak, causing a reluctant British Empire to reverse its decades-long support of the “Sick Man of Europe”. For this last, streets are named in his honor in Sofia, his name is memorized by thousands of school children for their history tests, and foreign diplomats make yearly trips from Washington, D.C., to his grave site to honor his memory.
November 21, 2010
I first read this book some 20 years ago, and recently re-read it. A boy from the Midwest winds up covering a terrible but very picturesque war in the far-off Balkans, where the telegraph is leading to a whole new world of war reporting - a kind of 19th century CNN-effect. A thumping good read with lots of historical insights.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews