HAWKINS OF THE PARIS HERALD

When Eric Hawkins went to work for the Paris Herald in 1915, he embarked on a career job that led him to the editorship of the paper for some thirty-six years, covering some of the greatest events and people of our times. Following flashbacks to his own youth (Hawkins came from a London journalist's family), and the zany story of how Bennett came to own the Herald, the author plunges into World War I, with its famed taxicab army grinding off to the front, the loss of the Lusitania, Bennett's rage at the Germans and President Wilson alike, the Big Bertha shellings, final victory and Bennett's death. Then come the Roaring Twenties, when Frank Munsey and the Reids successively owned the paper, and Isadora Duncan, the Windsors, Lindbergh, Ezra Pound and Harry's New York Bar made daily copy. But already through the Herald's frantic news room came harbingers of things to come -- Communist riots, Hitler's rise--with gifted men like Elliot Paul and Bill Shirer to cover the stories. The advent of the Nazis, wartime years in London, and the liberation of Paris in 1944 bring us to the era of Art Buchwald and a new generation of American expatriates. Another attractive account to add to the period repertoire of transcontinental operations.