Battle of Ink and Ice

January 1, 2023

Award-winning Vanderbilt historian Blackbourn rethinks Germany in the World, arguing that it was a persuasive force even before unification in the 19th century. Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and a prolific historian, Borman (Crown & Sceptre) limns the historic significance ofAnne Boleyn & Elizabeth I. In Revolutionary Spring, Wolfson Prize--winning Clark refreshes our view of the revolutions that rocked Europe in 1848. In Homelands, Oxford historian Garton Ash draws on both scholarship and personal experience to portray Europe post-World War II. In Soldiers Don't Go Mad, distinguished journalist Glass uses the friendship and literary output of outstanding war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen--both gay and both ultimately opposed to fighting--to show how an understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment first emerged during the industrialized slaughter of World War I. Journalist Hartman's Battle of Ink and Ice shows that the contention between explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, both claiming to have discovered the North Pole, also sparked a newspaper war with all the earmarks of fake news. The long-anticipated My Friend Anne Frank recounts Holocaust survivor Pick-Goslar's friendship with Frank (she's called Lies Goosens in The Diary of a Young Girl), having been together with her at the Westerbork transit camp and eventually Bergen-Belsen. Also known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, the Columbia River Bar forms where the river pours into the ocean off Oregon's coast and creates fearsome currents that have claimed numerous lives; like his abusive father, Sullivan risked crossing it, and he makes his book at once history, memoir, and meditation on male behavior at its extreme. Former undersecretary of defense for intelligence in the Obama administration, Vickers recalls a life in intelligence and special operations that arcs from his Green Beret days to his involvement in the CIA's secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan to the war on terror. In Road to Surrender, the New York Times best-selling Thomas (First: Sandra Day O'Connor) relies on fresh material to convey the decision to drop the atomic bomb from the perspectives of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, and Gen. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific. In National Dish, three-time James Beard award-winning food journalist von Bremzen investigates the relationship between food and place by examining the history of six major food cultures--France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey. In Beyond the Shores, the Harriet Tubman Prize--winning Walker (Exquisite Slaves) considers why Black Americans leave the United States and what they encounter when they do, moving from early 1900s performer Florence Mills to 1930s scientists to the author's own grandfather. An historian at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Walton assays the century-long intelligence war between the West and the Soviet Union/Russia, considering lessons that can be gleaned today in Spies.

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April 3, 2023
Polar controversy fuels the rise of the New York Times in this energetic debut from journalist Hartman. In September 1909, the New York Herald surprised the world by publishing an exclusive account of surgeon and explorer Frederick Cook’s unlikely discovery of the North Pole. Meanwhile, its archrival, the New York Times, had invested in a higher-profile expedition, led by veteran Arctic adventurer Robert Peary, which had set out a year later than Cook’s. Less than a week after Cook and the Herald claimed victory, Peary sent a telegram from Newfoundland asserting that he’d reached the North Pole. A vicious feud then unfolded, as Peary and the Times appealed to the National Geographic Society and other scientific institutions and publicly accused Cook of fraud. The controversy drove sales for both newspapers until it seemed to be resolved in December 1909 by a commission at the University of Copenhagen, which ruled that Cook had not proven he’d reached the North Pole; today it is widely believed that both men fell short of the mark. Hartman dramatically recounts the claims and counterclaims; draws colorful profiles of the explorers and their chief backers, the Herald’s James Bennett Jr. and the Times’s Albert Ochs; and incisively analyzes the populist vs. establishment aspect of the controversy. It’s as bracing as a blast of Arctic air.

May 15, 2023
Journalist Hartman delves into the actions of a host of contentious characters in this tale of polar-exploration controversies and the media hype that fueled them. There are a number of fascinating personalities here, with publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. and his newspaper, the New York Herald, engaging in increasingly sensationalized coverage to outmaneuver Adolph Ochs and his New York Times. The primary event is the competing narratives of Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, who both claimed to have reached the North Pole first, but Hartman's thorough research also casts light on the backstories of the Herald and the New York Times, which lead to forays into William Randolph Hearst's media empire, coverage of the Spanish American War, the travails of Henry Morton Stanley in Africa, and many explorations of the North Pole region. There is plenty of drama here as Hartman uncovers all sorts of conflicts and adventures, especially when it comes to Bennett and ongoing battles for dominance of Manhattan's media landscape. A first-rate title for readers fascinated by history and all who love a good dishy true story.

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Starred review from April 15, 2023
A thorough account of the unexpected connection between American media and Arctic exploration at the turn of the 20th century. Hartman, who has written for the Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, and the Wall Street Journal, pulls back the curtain on an era in which newspapers not only paid for exclusive rights to explorers' reports; they also funded full expeditions. He deftly links the dual narratives of Arctic exploration and the emergence of modern media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When "comparatively unknown southerner" Adolph Ochs assumed control of the New York Times--a newspaper many thought was beyond saving--near the end of the century, James Gordon Bennett Jr. and the New York Herald's domination of the market began to slip. Ochs chose the paper's new slogan, "All the News That's Fit to Print," and wanted the paper to become a respected "national authority" and an "impartial arbiter of ideas." Bennett, meanwhile, planned to "give the public what it craved" and "achieve unprecedented circulation." In spite of these varied approaches, the Times and Herald both found the quest for the North Pole newsworthy. Ochs and Bennett were on opposing sides as Arctic explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary asserted competing claims of reaching the North Pole. The ensuing battle featured payouts for damning proof that an explorer had invented his data, a nasty confrontation at a public lecture, and the stunningly flimsy presentation of evidence from both explorers. Though Hartman occasionally succumbs to the challenge of keeping dual subjects on track, he is a natural storyteller who breathes life into the most obscure details, keeping readers invested as the tale progresses. This is an engrossing and readable account of polar exploration, the birth of the modern newspaper, and media wars that feel all too familiar to modern readers. Brace for media feuds and frostbite as Hartman entertains on the trail between New York City newspapers and the North Pole.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.