Used in good condition: cover has wear especially on spine and corners; binding is loose; inside front cover has damage; inscription on inside front page; front blank page is missing; pages are unmarked and lightly age-toned; staining on page edges.
The author was a close friend of Ernie Pyle and his editor for many years, so he has added his own personal experiences to the book, as well as the letters Ernie wrote home to his wife Jerry. The result is a uniquely intimate view of Ernie and his life. He quotes from Ernie's columns sparingly, since these are available elsewhere and his readers of the day would already be familiar with them.
He covers Ernie's childhood through his years as a roving columnist (similar to what Charles Kuralt did in "On the Road" for a later generation) through to his death near the end of the war. The transition from popular stateside columnist to Pulitzer-prize winning chronicler of the life of the G.I. is told with enormous detail and insight.
There were plenty of other correspondents in Europe and Africa (Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, Edward R. Murrow, etc.) but Ernie is the only one to follow the troops up to the front and sleep on the ground with them. He would follow the troops for a few weeks and then come back to HQ to write a batch of columns. Supposedly the only notes he kept were of names and hometowns of those soldiers he mentions, this was apparently a feature of his columns. The few columns shared here show a tremendously sparse and moving writing style.
