Historian Deborah Cohen’s book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial has been chosen as one of The New Yorker’s best books of 2022. The book explores the lives of four journalists who reported from Europe and Asia during the lead-up to World War II. Cohen is the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History at Northwestern University.
The story follows John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, James Vincent “Jimmy” Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson, some of the most influential correspondents of the 20th century, as they charted two of the biggest stories of their time: the rise of fascism and the anti-colonial struggle against European empires. These individual reporters inspired related films including Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent and Woman of the Year, starring Katharine Hepburn.
Cohen’s book has already been well-received, with positive reviews from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Publishers’ Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal, and BookPage.
Learn more about Professor Cohen’s new book.
Related:
- Read the review from The New York Times.
- Read the review from the New Yorker.
- Read the review from the Wall Street Journal.
- In The Atlantic essay, “The Book that Unleased American Grief,” Cohen described how one of the journalists, John Gunther, published a book Death Be Not Proud that chronicles his personal story of his son’s death to a brain tumor. She explains how this pivotal book “defied a nation’s reluctance to describe personal loss.”