Get Hold Of The Lost City Designed By John Gunther Accessible In Readable Copy

came across this book while looking for all things Vienna, I believe it is now out of print, and is likely to stay that way.
I was surprised to remember that I had read a John Gunther book back when I was in middle school, I had read Death Be Not Proud, which I was quite moved by.
So I was looking forward to reading Lost City as it overlaps many of my interests, I read somewhere that Gunther wrote this in, but could not get it published then since the characters were too similar to

actual people that the publisher was concerned about libel lawsuits.
So it was published in, The book takes place in Vienna from about,

Gunther was a wellrespected journalist back in thes through thes, He wrote a number of Inside books about various countries of the world, And in Lost City, when Gunther writes like a journalist, the book goes well,

Sometimes the ego of the writer can get in the way of the story, In some writers, the desire to recreate reality in the writers favour, or according to his desired outcome can be transparent, Hemingway and Fitzgerald have both suffered a bit of this, but their writing, at least Fitzgerald is so clear that this tendency can be forgiven.
Gunther had set out to write an epic about an important turning point in Western history, which he was fortunate to have witnessed.
Regrettably, he fell short of creating this epic,

Part of this failure lies in part with the characters, The main protagonists are Mason Jarrett, a standin for Gunther himself, a foreign journalist writing for a Chicago newspaper, and Paula his wife.
They are constellated by a number of other journalists and their wives, from other countries, including other Americans, The other journalists add some color with their varying personalities, but one in particular was most appealing, the Hungarian Dr.
Sandor. Jarrett is an ambitious writer with dreams of writing literature, but he ends up also being quite a cad, carrying on various philandering romances.
Paula, not a cad, but is rather annoying, At one point she whines about not having a child yet and how that makes her a sort of unfinished woman.
WHAT! Really I know its thes and all, anyway, this aspect really turned me off, The female characters were really unreal and maudlin, and this brought the novel into disrepute,

Overall, these journalists break big stories, witness Viennas decline, and experience varying domestic discord, Besides the main characters being of a meh quality, I also felt that Gunther was trying to write two books and ended up writing neither if the book was about a group of journalists in a pivotal moment in history or a domestic novel about a relationship and the external influences.
But trying to fit both in one novel makes each side a bit mawkish each thread interfered with the other.
I did find the world of the journalists most delightful and would have appreciated a novel more in this vein.
Im pretty sure since Gunther was in this world, that he nailed it close, I found how the journalists worked together to break a big story, like the meltdown of the AOG Austrias biggest bank.


Also, when Gunther goes off in a poetical bent, trying to write descriptively, he had some problems.
Examples: “Snow fell, froze in the streets, melted, froze again, Lumps of black ice, which took on the shapes of squashed seals, lined the curbs automobiles crashing through the swollen streets sent up whiskers of icy sprays along the walks.
”

“Her body seemed heavy, the little shelf of tilted flesh between nose and lip, with its soft V, as if a kernel of corn candy had been pressed there, and grayish, not rosy, and a tiny, almost imperceptible with line around her big, chubby lips.
”

And theres more, Anyway, Im glad to have read this book for the historical content, but I dont think I could recommend it reading it for pleasure, its too much of a commitment for not enough reward.

Very interesting book about life as a journalist in Vienna after WWI and before WWII, I learned a lot about this time in history that I didn't know, Good insight into the life of a journalist in thes, I found this book when I was browsing a book to read at the National Library of Cambodia, I thought it might be good but it's too boring, I wish I knew German, Many German words are interspersed and not explained, I'm reading this because the era interests me,Germany.

I finished this book finally, I actually started liking the characters and I started wanting to know how it was going to turn out, but it was a rather difficult book to get into.
PreWar Vienna.
One of those "Could do better" novels, Interesting period which the author managed to make boring!
Read it years ago and there have been much better books published since.
THE LOST CITY COPYRIGHTBY JOHN GUNTHER PRINTED IN USA BY HARPER AND ROW, Fiction. Stories about's Vienna. I wanted to like this because I believe that John Gunther deserves to be revered for "Death Be Not Proud".
But it was pretty much a huge yawn, Mason Jarret is an American journalist working as a foreign correspondent in Vienna during the tumultuous decade of thes that preceded the rise of fascism in Europe and the Second World War.
Mason and his wife Paula share a spacious apartment in a rambling villa left over from the days of the Hapsburg Empire.
The couple are deeply in love and enjoy a comfortable, though far from lavish, lifestyle with lots of friends and a busy social life in their adopted city of Vienna, until the slow but steady rise of the Nazi Party in neighboring Germany begins to cast a shadow over Austrias carefree isolation and neutrality.
The Jarrets, along with their fellow Viennese citizens, struggle to maintain their genteel way of life while all around them the world is changing in ways that threaten to end that way of life forever.
The authors love for the city of Vienna shines through on every page, so much so that the city itself becomes the most interesting “character” in this novel.


For reasons I never quite understood, Mason blames himself for the collapse of Austrias most prominent banking institution, the AOG, a financial catastrophe that, according to Mason, precipitates the demise of Austrias federal republic, paving the way for the infiltration of the Austrian government by Nazi sympathizers.
With violence in the streets and the Republic collapsing around them, the Jarrets are forced out of their opulent apartment into public housing and soon find their marriage strained to the limit.
While Mason consistently professes his love and extolls the virtues of his lovely and capable wife Paula, he nonetheless betrays her in ways that, in the interest of keeping this review spoilerfree, I will not go into here.


Author John Gunther's travelogueworthy descriptions of Vienna and its historical authenticity make this book a very interesting and enjoyable read set in a part of Europe that is often overlooked as a setting for Twentieth Century novels focused on preWWII Europe.
The story has elements of both fiction and memoir, a wellcrafted exotic setting, and a level of historical accuracy and detail that bespeaks a close familiarity with the subject matter.
John Gunther was one of the best known and most admired journalists of his day, and his series of Inside books, starting with Inside Europe in, were immensely popular profiles of the major world powers.
One critic noted that it was Gunthers special gift to unite the best qualities of the newspaperman and the historian.
It was a gift that readers responded to enthusiastically, The Inside books sold,,copies over a period of thirty years, While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy, He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in.
The Gunthers divorced in. In, their beloved son Johnny John Gunther was one of the best known and most admired journalists of his day, and his series of "Inside" books, starting with Inside Europe in, were immensely popular profiles of the major world powers.
One critic noted that it was Gunther's special gift to "unite the best qualities of the newspaperman and the historian.
" It was a gift that readers responded to enthusiastically, The "Inside" books sold,,copies over a period of thirty years, While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy, He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in.
The Gunthers divorced in. In, their beloved son Johnny died after a long, heartbreaking fight with brain cancer, Gunther wrote his classic memoir Death Be Not Proud, published in, to commemorate the courage and spirit of this extraordinary boy.
Gunther remarried in, and he and his second wife, Jane Perry Vandercook, adopted a son, sitelink.