The first authoritative biography of pioneering photojournalist Dickey Chapelle, who from World War II through the early days of Vietnam got her story by any means necessary as one of the first female war correspondents.
From the beginning of World War II through the early days of Vietnam, groundbreaking female photojournalist and war correspondent Dickey Chapelle chased dangerous assignments her male colleagues wouldn't touch, pioneering a radical style of reporting that focused on the humanity of the oppressed.
She documented conditions across Eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War. She marched down the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the South Vietnamese Army and across the Sierra Maestra Mountains with Castro. She was the first reporter accredited with the Algerian National Liberation Front, and survived torture in a communist Hungarian prison. She dove out of planes, faked her own kidnapping, and endured the mockery of male associates, before ultimately dying on assignment in Vietnam with the Marines in 1965, the first American female journalist killed while covering combat.
Chapelle overcame discrimination both on the battlefield and at home, with much of her work ultimately buried from the public eye-until now. In First to the Front, Lorissa Rinehart uncovers the incredible life and unparalleled achievements of this true pioneer, and the mark she would make on history.
With a story as gripping as this chronicle of a female war correspondent, narrator Kate Handford wisely stays out of the way. She recounts the life of Dickey Chapelle at a steady pace, expressing emotion where appropriate and regularly pausing to let selected passages sink in. Even though this is a biography, not an autobiography, Handford almost becomes Chapelle, whose career took off when she re
