INSIDE AFRICA.

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Cuthbertson, Ken (October 2002). Inside: The Biography of John Gunther. pp.264–265. ISBN 9780759232884. Gunther married Jane Perry Vandercook in 1948; the two adopted a son. Jane P. Gunther, a devoted student of the arts who accompanied her husband on his voyages and contributed to his books, was born in August 1916. She died in New York City, on May 22, 2020, at the age of 103. She had been widowed for a week shy of half a century. [10] During World War I, the family changed the spelling of its name from Guenther to Gunther to avoid having an obviously-German name. [2] Seen from an airplane flying into Spokane, “Some fields looked like maple leaves and some like richly scrambled eggs. Think of all the redheaded girls you ever met; they are all down there in the wheat — auburn, russet, titian, chestnut, sandy. Then throw in the blondes.” This is far from being Gunther’s only salute to blondes. The volume, whose fortunate name Mr. Gunther did not de cide on until shortly before pub lication, was, he said, “written from a definite point of view; it is that the accidents of per sonality play a great role in his tory.” The book began with a profile of Hitler that was so unflattering (“I wrote, among other things, that the Führer was nil sexually”) that it earned for Mr. Gunther a place on the Gestapo's death list dur ing World War‐II.

He does, though, see signs that in some respects segregation is beginning to break down. “I saw Negroes and whites standing together in lines at post office windows and at Western Union counters, and while I was in Atlanta, The Journal , for the first time in its history, gave a Negro woman the title of ‘Miss.’”Oregon and Washington “look as much alike as twin peas or marbles. But … there is a tremendous difference between the two states otherwise. Nowhere else in the country can the extraordinary tenacity of state characteristics be better observed, the deep-rooted instinct of a state to grow its own way without regard to its neighbor. Oregon and Washington are, except in physiognomy, almost as different as Maine and Florida.” In 1936, two French archaeologists, Lebeuf and Griaule, led an expedition to Chad in North Central Africa. As they crossed the plains they saw some areas covered with small mounds. They also found large numbers of these mounds around Fort Lamy and Goulfeil. Deciding to investigate, they dug up several egg-shaped funeral jars that contained the remains of a gigantic race, along with pieces of their jewelry and their works of art. 1 These giants, according to the natives, were called the Saos. The making of the “Inside” books was phenomenally hard work, and Mr. Gunther did al most all of it himself. Mr. Gunther's admirers were grateful for his grasp of sheer scope, the enthusiasm apparent in his reporting and his gift for popularizing remote places by describing them bluntly and with feeling. By noting a seem ingly small detail, he could bring a place, a people, into sharp focus for his readers. According to Michael Bloch, Gunther enjoyed a same-sex relationship in the 1930s in Vienna with the future Leader of the British Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell. [7]

In addition to the "Inside" series and related volumes, Gunther wrote eight novels and three biographies. The most notable of them are Bright Nemesis, The Troubled Midnight, Roosevelt in Retrospect (published in 1950) and Eisenhower, a biography of the famous general released in 1952, the year that Dwight Eisenhower was elected President. In addition, Gunther published several books for young readers, including a biography of Alexander the Great in 1953, and Meet Soviet Russia, a two-volume adaptation of Inside Russia Today in 1962. In our time, when the intimate memoir has become commonplace, Harper & Brothers’ queasy reaction to Gunther’s project is a reminder of an era when stringent rules of reticence still reigned. The public’s unexpected embrace of the book is disorienting too. The usual assumption is that the modern, unguarded memoir’s origins lie in the narcissism of the 1990s, or the self-revelatory zeal of the ’70s. But Gunther’s surprise hit points to a different genesis: the anti-fascism of the ’30s and widespread revulsion at the dehumanizing horrors of World War II. The predominance of the genre today—which we think about as a celebration of “I”—had its beginnings in an attempt to heal the collective “we.” I suppose that I write, basi cally, for myself, to satisfy my own sometimes peculiar curiosi ties. In a way, my work has been an exercise in self‐educa tion at the expense of the pub lic. But I think I'm a pretty av erage person, and I have worked from the assumption that if something interests me it will probably interest the cas ual reader too. I have tried not to underestimate the reader's intelligence nor, at the same time, overestimate what he knows.” The book is divided into 52 chapters, organized by geography. Its geographical structure begins in California, continues through other western states to the Great Plains and Midwest, then east to the Northeast and Southeast, then west to Texas and Oklahoma, and finally to the "new states" of New Mexico and Arizona. Factual information about topics like geography, population, and history is commingled with highly opinionated statements ( Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called some of these opinions "flip judgments" [5]) about United States places and people. According to Gunther, Southern California was "the California of petroleum, crazy religious cults, the citrus industry, ... the weirdest architecture in the United States, ... and devotees of funny money", and a place where "climate is worshipped as a god". [13] Gunther described Phoenix, Arizona as the "cleanest city" he saw and Indianapolis as "the dirtiest." [14] He called Knoxville, Tennessee, "an extremely puritanical town" and the "ugliest city" he saw. [15] (The remarks about Indianapolis' dirtiness and Knoxville's ugliness spurred both of these cities to start beautification efforts and led Knoxville to establish the annual Dogwood Arts Festival. [5] [15]) He said that the "best beef" he ate was in Montana, the "best single meal" in Milwaukee, and the "best ice cream" in Richmond, Virginia. [14] New York has a birth every five minutes, and a marriage every seven. It has ‘more Norwegian-born citizens than Tromsoe and Narvik put together,’ and only one railroad, the New York Central, has the perpetual right to enter it by land. It has 22,000 soda fountains, and 112 tons of soot fall per square mile every month, which is why your face is dirty.”For more than 30 years, Mr. Gunther was looked to by stay‐at‐home public for his live ly, informed descriptions of the world at large. He traveled more miles, crossed more bor ders, interviewed more states men, wrote more books and sold more copies than any other single journalist of his time. At least 15 of his books were translated into more than 90 languages. Solid state physics Quantum theory Chemical bonds SCIENCE Physics Condensed Matter Física do estado sólido Mecânica quântica Hamilton, John M. (2009) Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting. Louisiana State University Press. A tribe of giants survives in the Sudan, but apparently little has been written about them. In his Inside Africa, John Gunther de-scribes them as a Nilotic peoples who "have spread their virile blood far afield, as witness the Masai in Kenya and the giant Watutsi 3 in Ruanda-Urundi, who are cousins to the Hamitic Sudanese." 4 An example of their gigantic but very slender stature may be seen in Manute Bol, the seven-foot-seven-inch pro basketball giant, who hails from this region. Slim as he still looks, Bol has put on quite a bit of weight since his rookie year in the NBA. One sports writer jokingly wrote that he has now "added enough poundage to require at least two pinstripes on his pajamas."