Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front
by Todd DePastino
List Price:
Our Price: $13.50
You Save: $14.45 (52%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $8.47 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Todd DePastinoEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-02-25
ISBN: 0393061833
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Book Reviews of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front
Book Review: A Beloved American Original
Summary: 5 Stars
The most famous cartoonist of World War Two was Bill Mauldin. Everyone knew his cartoons of the disheveled, ill-shaven GIs Willie and Joe, but not everyone liked them. The GIs themselves were big fans. They knew that Mauldin, even in the simple medium of newspaper comics, was getting their story right. In _Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front_ (Norton), Todd DePastino, who has previously edited a book of Willie and Joe cartoons, has given us what is, surprisingly, the first full length biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. The book fittingly contains dozens of Mauldin's drawings, and not all from the war years. Like many veterans, Mauldin may have had the high point of his life during the war, but his second Pulitzer came in 1958, and it's not even for his most famous post-war cartoon. A distinctly American genius, Mauldin deserved a sympathetic and detailed biography, and that is just what DePastino has given us.
Mauldin really was a genius with a pencil or pen. He was making detailed drawings before he could talk. He got some formal training, but he could not make cartoons pay, and unemployment was bad enough in 1940 that he joined the Arizona National Guard's 45th Infantry Division. His cartoons, featured in the division newspaper, were humorous takes on the sort of things other soldier cartoonists were doing, showing dumb privates peeling potatoes and dumb officers mouthing off criticisms. After he went through battle in Sicily and Italy, however, the cartoons changed, showing generally competent soldiers, doing a bloody, muddy, dangerous, and unappreciated job. The sympathetic accuracy of the portraits was what made them beloved by the dogfaces that recognized themselves in the depictions and the situations. The GIs loved Mauldin's cartoons; the officers were less than unanimous in their admiration. General Patton hated them, and early in Mauldin's army career, he tried pulling rank, telling Mauldin's commander "Get rid of Mauldin and his cartoons". It was one battle Patton lost. Mauldin's cartoons were syndicated stateside. He also began a writing career that was to prove to be successful, starting with _Up Front_, a bestselling account of the Italian campaign. He became a popular editorial cartoonist. His cartoons took down segregationists, the KKK, and the anti-Communist hysteria of Joe McCarthy. He got himself an FBI file for his efforts. His most famous postwar cartoon was the one of the statue of Lincoln from the Memorial, head in hands after the assassination of Kennedy. Mauldin remained a reporter, taking assignments in Vietnam, Israel, and even the Persian Gulf for our first war there. He acted briefly in the movies. He died of dementia, complicated by alcohol, and a severe scalding accident in 2003.
DePastino's wonderful and moving book rightly concentrates on the war years, but details plenty of the post-war career. Mauldin was self-critical enough to write, "I never quite could shake off the guilt feeling that I had made something good out of the war." He didn't like the Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion types who he felt glorified war, and he couldn't stand going to the memorials which brought back gruesome memories. But he died well loved by the soldiers who had loved him for depicting them realistically. In his nursing home, he didn't always recognize family that came to see him, and his marriages and career became blanks. But when the veterans came, just guys who had loved seeing themselves in his work, he seemed to know them. Years before, when Tom Brokaw put to him that the real Willies and Joes were America's "Greatest Generation," Mauldin wasn't having any of it. He replied that "they were human beings, they had their weaknesses and their flaws and their good sides and bad sides. The one thing they had in common was that they were a little too young to die." It was the realistic sort of respect his cartoons had always shown.
Summary of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front
The definitive biography of the greatest cartoonist of the Greatest Generation."The real war," said Walt Whitman, "will never get in the books." During World War II, the truest glimpse most Americans got of the "real war" came through the flashing black lines of twenty-two-year-old infantry sergeant Bill Mauldin. Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery, and Patton's pledge to "throw his ass in jail" to deliver his wildly popular cartoon, "Up Front," to the pages of Stars and Stripes. "Up Front" featured the wise-cracking Willie and Joe, whose stooped shoulders, mud-soaked uniforms, and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect bore eloquent witness to the world of combat and the men who lived-and died-in it.
This taut, lushly illustrated biography-the first of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin-is illustrated with more than ninety classic Mauldin cartoons and rare photographs. It traces the improbable career and tumultuous private life of a charismatic genius who rose to fame on his motto: "If it's big, hit it." 92 illustrations.
History Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Best Books of 2008, So Far
Shavetail: A Novelby Thomas Cobb
Scribner; Published: 2008-02-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.97
Price in other shops:
Then We Came to the Endby Joshua Ferris
Fig Tree; Published: 2007-03-01; Paperback; Book
So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novelby Leif Enger
Atlantic Monthly Press; Published: 2008-04-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.50
Price in other shops:
Obedience: A Novelby Will Lavender
Shaye Areheart Books; Published: 2008-02-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
The First Patientby Michael Palmer
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2008-02-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabiaby Tony Horwitz
Plume; Published: 1992-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.39
Price in other shops:
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smithby Fawn M. Brodie
Vintage; Published: 1995-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.75
Price in other shops:
Knots and Crosses (Inspector Rebus Novels)by Ian Rankin
St. Martin's Paperbacks; Published: 1995-12-15; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.50
Price in other shops:
Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Frontby Todd DePastino
W. W. Norton; Published: 2008-02-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.54
Price in other shops:
Into the Wildby Jon Krakauer
Anchor; Published: 2007-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.37
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New Worldby Tony Horwitz
Henry Holt and Co.; Published: 2008-04-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.00
Price in other shops:
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed Americaby David Hajdu
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-03-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biographyby David Michaelis
Harper; Published: 2007-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.88
Price in other shops:
Counselor: A Life at the Edge of Historyby Ted Sorensen
Harper; Published: 2008-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.15
Price in other shops:
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean Warby David Halberstam
Hyperion; Published: 2007-09-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.90
Price in other shops:
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil Warby Drew Gilpin Faust
Knopf; Published: 2008-01-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.98
Price in other shops:
Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45by Max Hastings
Knopf; Published: 2008-03-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.90
Price in other shops:
Up Frontby Bill Mauldin
W. W. Norton; Published: 2000-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.32
Price in other shops:
Bill Mauldin's Army: Bill Mauldin's Greatest World War II Cartoonsby Bill Mauldin
Presidio Press; Published: 1983-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.49
Price in other shops:
Willie & Joe: The WWII Yearsby Bill Mauldin
Fantagraphics Books; Published: 2008-04-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $25.90
Price in other shops: