Hell Before Breakfast: America’s First War Correspondents

From acclaimed historian Robert H. Patton, author of The Pattons and Patriot Pirates, a rediscovery and celebration of America’s first chroniclers of foreign war.

The first war correspondent, William H. Russell of The Times of London, described himself and his profession as the miserable parent of a luckless tribe. But it wasn’t long before others saw it differently. Hell Before Breakfast is the spectacular tale of larger-than-life Americans who made it their business to bring back news from the front; from Bull Run to the Paris Commune, from Africa to the Ottoman Empire, through decades of lightning-fast technological progress and high adventure. As America matured into a great power and the monarchies of Europe battled for dominance through a series of brief, bloody imperial wars, with the storm clouds of World War I drawing rapidly closer, these men and their newspapers were at center stage-the vanguard of a golden age of war correspondence.