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First to the Front

The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The first authoritative biography of pioneering photojournalist Dickey Chapelle, who from World War II through the early days of Vietnam got her story by any means necessary as one of the first female war correspondents.
"I side with prisoners against guards, enlisted men against officers, weakness against power."
From the beginning of World War II through the early days of Vietnam, groundbreaking female photojournalist and war correspondent Dickey Chapelle chased dangerous assignments her male colleagues wouldn't touch, pioneering a radical style of reporting that focused on the humanity of the oppressed.
She documented conditions across Eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War. She marched down the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the South Vietnamese Army and across the Sierra Maestra Mountains with Castro. She was the first reporter accredited with the Algerian National Liberation Front, and survived torture in a communist Hungarian prison. She dove out of planes, faked her own kidnapping, and endured the mockery of male associates, before ultimately dying on assignment in Vietnam with the Marines in 1965, the first American female journalist killed while covering combat.
Chapelle overcame discrimination both on the battlefield and at home, with much of her work ultimately buried from the public eye—until now. In First to the Front, Lorissa Rinehart uncovers the incredible life and unparalleled achievements of this true pioneer, and the mark she would make on history.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 10, 2023
      “Dickey Chapelle should be a household name,” writes historian and cultural critic Rinehart in her entertaining debut, a biography of the first American female journalist to be killed in combat. Born Georgette Louise Meyer in 1918, Chapelle went from a job promoting a Miami air show to working for an airline’s publicity department, then selling her photographs to National Geographic on assignment during WWII. Posted to Iwo Jima, she documented the travails and triumphs of U.S. Marines to encourage Americans to donate blood. After the war, she toured Europe to study the impact of the Marshall Plan, then went on assignment, mostly for Reader’s Digest, in various hot spots around the world. She embedded with the Algerian Revolutionary Army, was arrested by Soviet border guards and spent five weeks in solitary confinement while covering the Hungarian Revolution, “patrolled the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the Cambodian border” with the Vietnamese Airborne Brigade in 1961, marched with the Cuban Revolutionary Army, and was killed by shrapnel in 1965 while on patrol with a Marine platoon in Vietnam. Throughout her career, Chapelle endured and overcame mockery and misogyny, and became a fierce critic of “press censorship and counterproductive military tactics.” Jam-packed with colorful details and incisive character sketches, this is a vivid reappraisal of a pioneering journalist.

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  • English

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