An Unladylike Profession

I don''t know about you, but I've never heard much about female war correspondents during WWI, which makes An Unladylike Profession by Chris Dubbs an even more enjoyable and fascinating book. What a terrific read and a great addition to my library!

The book introduces the reader to a group of American women who did the unthinkable during an unthinkable time - they left the safety and solitude of domestic life back home, and put themselves into the European war zone. Surely they were brave, but they were also clever in their approach to a male-dominated profession. Unwelcome at the front lines, they boarded refugee trains to spend time with women who'd seen first-hand the ravages of war, they volunteer with aid organizations to get access to wounded soldiers to learn the truths of what was really going on at the front lines. And they did what women have always done - they networked, they built relationships, and they shared the stories of hardship and courage and death with millions of others, effectively framing the war as something entire communities experience and endure, not just the warriors.

I loved this truth by Corra Harris writing for the Saturday Evening Post: "What men suffer in war is written in history. It is remembered. They earn something which is handed down to generations that one after them, which praise them... When one writes of the women's side of the war one cannot tell of battles won, or of the glories that crown the heads of victorious men. It must be a story of sorrows; of despair; of poverty; of privations patiently endured; of defeat in the tender hearts of all women; of the suffering of little children."

Of course, the women highlighted in this book also paved the way for other women to cover wars and disasters and all the things the world throws at us, and that effort was not an easy one, either. Few men were accepting of women war correspondents at the time. Women were shut out of opportunities, were ignored and coddled, were discounted. But they kept on telling the stories and influencing public opinion about the present war and the ones to come.

An Unladylike Profession is a wonderfully written history and a necessary lesson in what resistance and resilience and perseverance can look like in the hands of intelligent and fearless women. The author does a great job of tying the stories of the many correspondents to together into one cohesive and engaging tale. He gives you enough information and background on the writers, their efforts and their contributions, while also leaving enough unsaid to create curiosity. As I was reading, I stopped dozens of times to google more about these women - even going so far as reading old newspaper articles they had written. This is a topic- and these are women - I will continue to explore. Thanks, Chris Dubbs, for writing a great book!

This review is based on an advance copy reading.

A fascinating book that mixes the history of the First World War with the history of Journalism and, in particular, the work of women journalists reporting from the home front and the battlefront.
There are details of news stories and features from 3 dozen American women who overcame the men only club of war reporting and official restrictions on their movements to provide a female perspective of soldiers fighting and dying and the suffering of civilians forced to flee their homes.
This was the "women's angle" on war.
When journalist Elizabeth Frazer was prevented from reaching the front line she joined the Red Cross as a nurse to gain access to the trenches. Similarly, Elizabeth Warren reached the front lines by working for the YMCA canteen, taking food to soldiers. The more enlightened newspaper editors believed that women were more likely to get soldiers to share their thoughts and emotions.
Mary O'Reilly joined a group of Belgian refugees, conducting interviews with some as they fled from the oncoming German Army. There were horrific stories of wounded and dying soldiers. One, by the already famous reporter Nellie Bly, describes the terrible fate of a Russian soldier in a Budapest hospital. The surgeon had summoned her, telling her the man's wounds were the worst he had ever seen in his life. The full details of the Russian soldier's injuries require the reader to have a strong stomach, so those of a nervous disposition have been warned.
For a writer such as Corra Harris of the Saturday Evening Post it was the refugees who showed the real face of war.
However, at all times, both male and female reporters and the editors of various American newspapers and magazines had to be wary that their reporting of the facts of the war did not turn in to propaganda for one side or the other.
Meanwhile, female journalists travelled to European capital cities as well as the battle front not only to report on the conflict but to write of overwhelming social change due to the campaign for women's rights as well as political unrest and the rise of revolutionary socialism throughout Europe. They also wrote of the involvement of women in organising aid for refugees and setting up hospitals to cope with the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers and civilians.
In his 3rd book on the First World War, the author Chris Dubbs mixes the drama of women's war reporting with an eminently readable history of the years between the outbreak of the "war to end all wars" and the contentious peace settlement at Versailles.
My thanks to the publisher Potomac Books and to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.

This as an interesting look at World War I through the eyes of the female war correspondents that covered it.

Most of them I had never heard of (with the minor exception of Nellie Bly, who only featured briefly) but I ended the book feeling the desperate urge to strike off, somehow, into the unknown myself. These women were certainly characters, and managed many times through unconventional means to get closer to the action than their male colleagues.

The book emphasizes that they tended to cover the war in a more "personal" way, telling stories of day-to-day encounters and experiences, rather than writing sweeping name-and-date type articles about tactics and strategy. Overall, though, it isn't really an exploration of how WWI impacted the state of women in journalism, nor is it about journalism in WWI in general; it's more a collection of micro-biographies, snapshots of a group of intrepid women, following their correspondence careers until the end of the war.

It was interesting in an "oh, huh" sort of way, but definitely not unforgettable required reading.

I was very excited to read this book. I am always looking for a read the helps to highlight people in history that are commonly overlooked. None of the women in the book I had heard of and was happy to learn about these women that have been overlooked but contributed as much as men with war corresponding.

I would have loved to have gotten a little bit more context about each woman's life and would have liked to read how they were treated on the front lines by their males peers. Overall, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn something about people that have been overlooked throughout history.

The title of the book basically lays it out for you, this tells the story of a variety of American women who became war correspondents during WWI. I loved getting to read this one because I was able to learn about a bunch of women that I never even knew existed. I really didn’t even think about the existence of female war correspondents so I loved being proven wrong and getting to learn something new.

I loved the way that this book was laid out. It generally went in chronological order, but it also veered off when talking about different fronts and different struggles that the women went through. I really liked that we were introduced to all the different women when it was relevant, but then they came up again and again throughout the book when their stories overlapped and when they traveled somewhere different to experience another aspect of the war. It was such a joy getting to read about all the correspondents, the way some of them had to fight to be able to report and the way that some of them had already made connections that placed them on the front lines right away. It was amazing reading about them and the way that they weren’t afraid to put themselves in the middle of danger to get the stories that they wanted.

The book started from the very beginning of the war and went all the way to after the fighting was finished and all the countries were trying to repair themselves. I don’t really know what to say, if you want to learn more about some incredible women who pushed boundaries then I definitely suggest this one. It was a solid read and I’m definitely going to be looking up some more information on some of these trailblazing women.

trigger warning
<spoiler> misogyny, gore, trauma, rape, slavery, antisemitism, deportation </spoiler>

In this book, author Chris Dubbs explores women journalists who covered WWI, illustrating how they created such a field and focused on aspects their male counterparts most often ignored.

Most of these names were completely new to me, the exceptions being Edith Wharton and Nelly Bly.
Two things bothered me about this book, with only one being a problem:
- there are no footnotes, you have to gather what you're looking for from the bibliography
- I learned more from this book about WWI than I did in school.

The latter, of course, is neither a thing the book can do anything about nor something that reflects in any way upon it. The German school administration just avoids this topic, going from the assassination of a person whose name I am constantly forgetting because I coulnd't care less to the traity of Versailles, as if no time passed between those two.
And the first is kind of funny when you consider that the sources to the pictures are listed sometimes right down to their Library of Congress signature.

The main focus of this book is on the obstacles the journalists had to face, the strategies they employed to gain access to the front lines, and the stories they told.
Getting approved as a war correspondend proved to be a challenge in itself, but if people thought you frail and suspectible to strange outbursts of emotions - a.k.a. a woman - you had two ways to go:
Either you were so popular that your connections could get you where you wanted to be, or you took a job with a charity, doing some medical training or just helping with providing food. I have great admiration for those who chose the latter way, because it meant not only working your fingers to the bones for the main job, but collecting your thoughts in a coherent way after hours to cobble something worth publishing together when you already spent the energy you had available for that day.

Those women who reported from Europe's trenches told stories of "the women angle", meaning how civilians percieved the war efforts and what they did to do their part, being nurses, ambulance drivers, factory workers - how women stopped caring only for their own household and were able to get "real" jobs, paid jobs, jobs that brought public acknowledgement.
What interested me more were the women who worked at the front lines, because it turns out that women were everywhere. While only one or two allusions to prostitution are made, you see that women were everywhere, trying to built where the men destroyed - this gets very clear in the recounting of the Women's conference, which decided that imminent peace is needed.
I think that if I were to further my knowledge on anything mentioned in this book, actively seeking out more information, it would concern said conference.

I think what this book did best is to illustrate the differences and similarities shared by the different (white) women who either happened to be in Europe when war broke out or specifically traveled there - here - to report on what they saw.
There is no one type of female war correspondent.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

I learned a lot of new things reading this work; not just about women war correspondents, but history of the world in the period from about 1914-1919. My undergrad degree was in History/Political Science, but the 20th century as history wasn't taught much during the 70s. Yes, I remember the Archduke being assassinated and kicking off World War I (I admit I didn't realize the U.S. didn't start then until a few years later when I was reading history for "fun.") And my knowledge of the time frame of the WWI Russian Front and the civil revolutions in Russia was rather confused.

This book clarified all that, plus. I enjoyed discovering all these women that were pushing their way into the territories usually considered "men's work"; I don't think many people realize that not all women were only at home raising kids, cooking, and cleaning during these times. (I use "only" in a sarcastic way. After staying home with young children for four years I realize that being a good housewife is soooo much harder than going out to work everday! I wasn't "good"...)

I read an ARC provided by NetGalley and the publishers, in order to give an honest review.

Since this is the advance version, there wasn't an index yet. My hope is that the index cites pages where each woman is included because I did begin to get confused about which woman was being highlighted. Chapters often covered a number of women's experiences during a certain time period, so the continuity of each journalist's experiences was broken up. I really liked the appendix with all of the covered women and their information. However, maybe that information would be better at the beginning so that readers know they can check there if there's confusion. The bibliography will be helpful for anyone desiring to delve in to this topic or coverage of the war in general.

I do recommend the book to those interested in women's studies, journalism, history, or World War I specifically.

This is a rounded, readable and riveting book, following many female and some male journalists through the course of WW1 and its immediate aftermath. While most of the women are American, we also meet some British ladies; one who was closer to the scene when the war broke out and headed straight for Belgium.

The women stowed away on troop ships; they gained letters of introduction and press credentials for everything from the Saturday Evening Post to Good Housekeeping. When men filed reports from London because correspondents were not allowed to travel to Europe, the women volunteered with first aid, nursing stations or the YMCA canteens to reach the war, often just behind or at the trenches, and endured shelling, privation, cold, filth, stench, diseases and appalling sights. For weeks or months on end as they reported from the hospitals and trains and towns and embattled cities.

Through the stories we see many facts I didn't know; the destruction by Germans of the city of Louvain and its college's medieval manuscripts (1914); the refusal of a German commander to let milk through to a captured town for babies, since the Fatherland made war on man, woman and child equally, he said (1914); Belgium halted the German advance by flooding fields with the sea (1914); the continued sale by Holland of food to Germany, against the wishes of Britain (1916); Russia saw the Czar ban alcohol sales on the same day as he declared war. The Russian Revolution is covered; the Turkish atrocity against Armenian villagers; the American troops idling in Russia after the war's end.

The swift move of women into men's jobs is covered; what women were considered unable to do, they now did. Through the war they created the support system for the warriors, nursed the fallen and received the bad news. They kept their countries functioning and made munitions. They could not vote. A woman covering the Treaty of Versailles saw that not one woman sat at the table.

You will know some of the names mentioned, such as Nellie Bly and John Reed; other journalists were literary women, murder mystery authors, playwrights, suffragists, photojournalists, household hints writers, socialites and foreign correspondents. We also see the evolution of war correspondents; and journalism as a tool of war departments, and neutral reports as something to be managed.
The author has done exceptional work for us and I thank her.

Bibliography P.301 - 311 in my e-ARC. Many classic, posed photos of the day showing the ladies dressed in the latest warm coat, a Russian fur hat, or khaki battledress, as appropriate.
I read an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

There are so many lenses through which to view the experience of war, and this book adds one that most folks would not think about--female war correspondents. The vocation of journalism is always risky, as is being a woman during wartime, as well as being a woman perceived as doing a man's job. The female WWI correspondents profiled, then, faced unimaginable difficulties in telling the horrific stories of war. Some names, like Edith Wharton, are well known. Others, like Mary Boyle O’Reilly, deserve to be.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I have to admit that I have not read as much about World War 1 than I have about the Second World War which means I learned a lot from this book. You see, while I expected to learn about female reporters who were covering the conflict, I was not expecting to learn as much about the war itself.

Yes, I knew about Nelly Bly, but I was also introduced to a dozen other fearless reporting.