The Faber Book of Reportage

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Las Casas, who became a Dominican missionary, was the first European to expose the oppression of the native races of Latin America He had himself taken apart in the conquest of Cuba, 1513 A suffragette (the Lady Constance Lytton, disguised as a lower-class woman) is force-fed during a hunger strike in Walton Gaol in 1910: Laying in her own vomit afterwards, exhausted and “quite helpless”, Lytton writes, “Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine. It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elaine Howey, I was sure. When the ghastly process was all over and all quiet, I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, which wasn't much just then, 'No surrender,' and there came the answer past any doubt in Elaine's voice, 'No surrender.'" George Bernard Shaw, writing about his mother's funeral in 1914, begins with, “Why does a funeral always sharpen one's sense of humour and rouse one's spirits?” And after humourously describing his mother's cremation – making plain that she would have joined in on the laughter – GBS concludes with, “O grave, where is thy victory?”

The Faber Book of Reportage: A Book by - Find Book The Faber Book of Reportage: A Book by - Find Book

In the introduction, Professor Carey informs us that the book is one of reportage, of written accounts by eyewitnesses. According to him this makes for authenticity by relying on information from people who can say, “I was there,” such as the bystanders, travellers, warriors, murderers, victims, and professional reporters he has included in his collection.The first-person accounts cover history from Greek and Roman times up to the middle 1980's - though coverage of any given timeframe may be uneven. It is relatively Euro/Anglo-centric, with only a few non-Western anecdotes. The mix of topics covered is also somewhat uneven - I found myself skimming many of the battle accounts - however, I imagine the source material for that type of event was more abundant than the "slice of life" accounts I found more interesting.

The Faber Book of Reportage - Google Books The Faber Book of Reportage - Google Books

Often we just get the victor's account of an event in our history books, so it was so refreshing to be able to read an everyday person's instead. I absolutely loved this book. The variety of events covered in these accounts, and the "real" feeling that they had to them kept me engaged throughout the entire book. The majority of events did cover major battles, military engagements, and lives of soldiers, but even among those, the vast differences in wars across generations and countries was fascinating to read. Lighter events included a description of the “frost fairs” held on the frozen River Thames during the 17th century, and an account of near-farcical events during the funeral of King George II in 1760, an interesting contrast to the precision of the military manoeuvres during the recent funeral of Elizabeth II. There is a description of the various regional methods that Hindu women employed for suttee, written in 1650 by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier: “This miserable condition causes her to detest life, and prefer to ascend a funeral pile to be consumed with her deceased husband, rather than be regarded by all the world for the remainder of her days with opprobrium and infamy.”I was surprised how many were by or about subjects of England, but that says something about the prominence of that country in world history.

The Faber Book of Reportage by Professor John Carey - Waterstones The Faber Book of Reportage by Professor John Carey - Waterstones

What was it like to be caught in the firestorm that destroyed Pompeii? To have dinner with Attila the Hun? To watch the charge of the Light Brigade? To see the Titanic slide beneath the waves? John Carey's best-selling "Faber Book of Reportage" draws its eyewitness account from memoirs, travel books and newspapers. This is history with the varnish removed. "A quite stunning collection. There are descriptions in this book so fresh that they sear themselves into the imagination". (Jeremy Paxman). Here is one for the way people deal with too much death. The way they just become desensitized to the horror and get on with living. I had been about ten days at the front when it happened. The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail. A piece from Robert Graves, from 1915, described the incredible courage of a “tender-hearted lance-corporal named Baxter”, who walked out on his own into No-Man’s Land on the Western Front, waving a handkerchief, to go to a wounded soldier trapped close to the German lines. Initially the Germans fired at him but eventually they let him come on. Graves recommended Baxter for the Victoria Cross, but “the authorities thought it worth no more than a Distinguished Conduct Medal.”John Carey is a British literary critic and retired emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has twice chaired the Man Booker Prize judging panel and is chief book reviewer for the London Sunday Times and appears in radio and TV programs such as Saturday Review and Newsnight Review. A true five-star masterpiece that collects hundreds of eyewitness accounts of important historical events from the age of antiquity to the overthrow of Marcos. A perfect book for anyone interested in history and the humanities. Carl Sagan’s quote “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors” is absolutely true in this case. There really should be many more volumes to this collection.

The Faber Book of Reportage by John Carey | Waterstones

Made up of nearly three hundred contemporaneous accounts, Eyewitness to History gives a truly fascinating insight into what people were thinking in the moment while experiencing those events from the past 2500 years that we still talk about today. Edited by Oxford professor and renowned literary critic John Carey, and initially released in 1987, my only complaint would be that these accounts are overwhelmingly written by white men – too often recounting battle scenes that failed to engage me – but I understand that this reflects the interests of the book's editor and the ethos of its time; I wouldn't want this book itself to be changed but I would be interested in reading other books of this type with more varied points-of-view. Thoroughly valuable romp through history, as recorded by the folks who were there to witness it.It is history these accounts offer, but history deprived of generalizations. The writers are strangers to omniscience. The varnish of interpretation has been removed so we can see people clearly, as they originally were – gazing incredulously at what was, for that moment, the newest thing that had ever happened to them. The abandonment of the Gallipoli Campaign brought about the resignation of Churchill, the chief supporter of the venture. Stunning . . . There are descriptions in this book so fresh that they sear themselves into the imagination.' This observation by Amerigo Vespucci is an example. He assumes that war has causes that he is familiar with. The concept that maybe war is an innate part of human essence is alien to him. And there were so many fascinating literary references, as with the open-air cremation of Percy Shelley, written by Edward John Trelawny in 1822: “The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had anyone seen me do the act I should have been put into quarantine.”