Selected Product:
| Not So Wild a Dream
Paperback
Author: Eric Sevareid
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Release Date: 1995-05
ISBN-10: 0826210147
ISBN-13: 9780826210142
List Price: $29.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Again available in paperback is Eric Sevareid's widely acclaimed Not So Wild a Dream. In this brilliant first-person account of a young journalist's experience during World War II, Sevareid records both the events of the war and the development of journalistic strategies for covering international affairs. He also recalls vividly his own youth in North Dakota, his decision to study journalism, and his early involvement in radio reporting during the beginnings of World War II.
Not So Wild a Dream
| Customer Rating: | Eric Sevareid (1912 - 1992) was a third generation Norwegian-American born and raised in a small town in northern North Dakota. His book of memoirs Not So Wild a Dream, published in 1947, is mostly about an action-filled 15 year period from high school graduation in 1930 (age 17) to the end of World War II (age 32). During that time Sevareid professionally and personally went through a number of adventures that typify his "Greatest Generation" and events of the world at large.
Sevareid was one of the pioneering "Morrow Boys", a team of radio journalists who filed daily radio journalistic pieces from Europe during the war. This allowed him to travel to many places and get up close to the front and fighting. Sevareid is at his best narrating his adventures, the book is episodic and some of the best include: Bombings in London during the Battle of Britain; the plane wreck while going over "the hump" into China; his experiences in Paris during the "phony war" and "Exodus"; the horrors of war on the Italian front; the D-Day invasion and subsequent Battle of the Rhine; the mutiny on-board a Liberty Ship in NY harbor. His accounts of the Great Depression, when he tramped around as a hobo on a train are really excellent, as is his description of a 2500 mile canoe trip, which is covered in more detail in his 1935 book Canoing with the Cree. These two books, written while still a young man, would be his most popular, and last real literary output - although he always considered himself a writer first, most of his later career was on television..
Sevareid was known for writing "think pieces", for example in one transcript, aired late in the war to popular acclaim, he talks about the unknowability of the experience of combat for a soldier, the impossibility of words to describe the immediate and often irrational emotions and thoughts of a soldier. These "think pieces" became a trademark of his later in life as a TV reporter, and Not So Wild a Dream often goes off on a thinking tangent. If there is a theme to the book, Sevareid is seeking the essence and spirit of his time and generation, what we might call the "Zeitgeist", and he often comes very close to capturing the immediate feeling of change. It is why this book is so important as a primary source for documenting the times and his generation. One of the more profound moments for me is when he sees a change in his generations attitude towards war:
"Our own men, whose cult was antimilitarism [in the 1930s students were highly anti-military], whose habit is to identify themselves merely as civilians in different cloths who detested soldiering, now subtly changed. There was a dash and verve about them that I had rarely observed before, and young boys would frankly say: "In Italy all i used to think about was going home. Now I kinda hate to quit before we get to Berlin." It was if they suddenly realized they were soldiers by profession, with the honest desire to complete this masterpiece of their skill down to the last detail."
Sevareid is right, during WWII the American military went from a small and and unpopular enterprise to a large beast that to this day is a major force in American culture, the consequences of which Eisenhower predicted in his military-industrial complex speech. Another area Sevareid muses on is the waning power of Britain and the ascending power of the USA - which given the events post-Cold War and the "Rise of the Rest" of the world, also has a prophetic tone. To get an idea what the US will be like as it becomes less relevant in the world - with the rise of China, India and the rest - one only has to read Sevareid's account of the waning power of Britain in the last chapters of the book. |
Citizen Sevareid, An American That Mattered
| Customer Rating: | | I ran into an old friend in the library stacks, an old CBS commentator pictured on the back of his book, "Not So Wild A Dream." For one who was always captivated by this worldly-wise soul, Eric Sevareid, pages into this memoir of his early years to manhood and full citizenship at the close of World War II I was in complete enthrallment. Like striking the richest vein of learning. Inside this "memoir" you wil find three adventures: the earliest taken by Sevareid and a companion by canoe and foot over 1300 miles of northwest waterways at age 17; then a railway tour of the U.S. in the thirties, filled with nuggets of whimsy and wisdom, leading to the outbreak of World War II,the final adventure spanning 4 continents, major Allied campaign areas while raising a family and meeting deadlines.All the captivating storytelling gifts man can struggle for are on display in this wonderful look at the Greatest Generation in the first half of the 20th Century by one of our very own. Compelling human drama, amazing quickly-drawn human sketches and thought-provoking commentary when normal words begin to fail are the seldom-realized resources of this journalist of the House of Murrow. For those who know that time and place only through Life or Time magazines, this will color in all the gaps with greater dimension. This is a treasure trove for aspiring writers of any level to read one who walked with Dickens, Gibbons, Herodotus, Churchill and Gertrude Stein at his side, the antidote for the TV jackanapes who serve us propaganda with no historical context under the banner of "headline news." Sevareid represents the elite of Murrow talent who were first in the service of truth, skeptical of those who wandered away from that path and had the integrity to caution those who thought otherwise.Henry Adams, another American, represents the patrician class; Sevareid, a classless original. |
A Masterpiece
| Customer Rating: | One of the best books written by an American. Read it, and you will agree.
The book was compared to "The Education of Henry Adams" when it was first published. I think Sevareid's book is much better. Ignorant of me? I hope not. I have read them both more than once, and Sevareid is the best.
This is the book to read about America in the 20th Century. The depression, riding the rails, the incredible canoe trip Sevareid and his friend made, pre-war Europe and Nazi Germany.
Then, the war. Sevareid saw it from Asia and Europe. He survived the crash of his C-46 crossing "the Hump," and returned to Europe to see the end of the war.
You see the war as he saw it, and you read one remarkable story after another. Sevareid's account of the war is personal, on a personal level. He writes of people and events. the GI slogging through Italy, and the impressions left by encounters with the great and powerful.
What a great book. He wrote thoughtfully and beautifully. His observations are remarkable. You feel America when you read his book. What a treat to have this book around. Just fabulous. |
The Life of Sevareid
| Customer Rating:  | Well, yes, Eric Sevareid's autobiography to the year 1946 is a good read by a seasoned world observer. He grew up in the same North Dakota milieu as my father. I liked the part where he was advised not to enlist during World War II because he might find himself "...cranking a mimeograph machine in the public relations section of some Nebraska army camp for the next three years." Surely his contributions as a wartime news correspondent served in good stead.
I'm not sure Sevareid thought much of women-he refers to an "honest whore" and "old crones." His wife is barely mentioned. Then again, he was a product of his time. Sevareid ends his book with, I guess, a plea for niceness and not bad war. As has been said, however, men love war. It is "...like lifting a corner of the Universe and taking a peek." We'll never top that.
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The greatest of tributes: He wrote well.
| Customer Rating: | | The rarest of coming of age stories, one that deals not with the emotional struggles that adolescents face upon reaching social maturity, but instead a story of a generation and a nation (would that we Xers had a representative as articulate and thoughtful as Severeid) coming to terms with their ideological commitments and global responsibilities. |
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