Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir Paperback – Illustrated, May 7, 2001

If you appreciate good writing, I mean incisive, witty, direct writing, you will love this book. She had a voice and used it with more skill than anyone I have read in quite awhile. The book is a series of travel logs in China, Africa, the Caribbean , and Moscow. It's funny, enlightening, and insightful, not only about the places but human nature. She's honest about herself, or at least is skillful enough to sound like it, and about the people she encounters. Buy it, read it. Laugh a little.

Gellhorn's description of her travels to China with Hemingway, a significant part of the book, but less than half, is totally captivating and worth the whole price of the book. It was so good, it was extra disappointing that the rest of the book paled in comparison. I finally stopped reading about two thirds of the way through. Her description of her subsequent travels are out of date and relentlessly dismal. Still she was a helluva woman for her times and you should have an appreciation for her. She was witty, forthright and perceptive.

I liked the book but what I received was a library book from a library in Oregon. Very odd and not what I expected. I’m happy to recycle library books- a good plan.

Martha Gellhorn doesn't use Ernest Hemingway's name when she is writing about travels she made with him, but by the time I finished my last adventure with her, I realized he'd been in the entire book, on every one of her journeys, and not because of her writing style. It is very different than his. It was the way she wrote of him, when she did, which was rare, but it was so powerful, I could actually feel the touch of one soul mate to another. Gellhorn is captivating, bold, reckless, romantic, and deeply, powerfully, and hypnotically inspired to help the world. And, she writes it all so perfectly. I will read this book again and again.

Hemingway is in the chapter "Mr. Ma's Tigers," describing a trip to China in early 1941. Gellhorn calls Hemingway U.C. (unwilling companion), and he is fascinating. His drinking contest with a roomful of Chinese generals is a hoot. When he disappears after the first chapter, the narrative is much less interesting.

Martha Gellhorn leaves no prisoners. Honest, opinionated, fearless, entitled, impulsive, deeply caring and unrepentant match for Hemingway. Her stories of horror trips and how she lived her life were captivating. Whenever my 21st Century sensibilities started to raise red flags I read on an gained a deeper understanding. My Mother was an independent woman a few years younger than Gellhorn who had much the same spirit and strength. Really interesting stories written with great verve.

These cover only a small part of her travels in the world; these are more personal rather than strictly journalistic. You don't have to know it was her then-husband, Ernest Hemingway, who is her companion in the trip to China, but it lets you picture things more vividly. As though it isn't vivid enough! The accounts of her travels to and in China during the time of the great civil war there, of Russia in one of its many times of great suppression, and of the Caribbean as she went from island to island are not to be missed. The places she went and persons she met are fascinating and telling. Her section on Africa was the weakest, but still worth reading,I say as one who lived many years on that continent. I think she was too old and ill-prepared when she went there and became too sick a good deal of the time and made some careless statements which, if generalized from the specific cases at hand, give the erroneous impression of racist feelings on her part, which in fact she did not hold, as I was relieved to discover as I read on. What comes across throughout the book is that in each place she visits, she is acutely aware and objects to the injustices that are rampant. But her main achievement is to make them so real you feel you have been there with her and experienced some real adventure.

This book by Martha Gellhorn is a great read, especially for those interested in women who have faced and at least seriously dented if not broken the glass ceiling. Martha was an important journalist and a breakthrough female war correspondent, against all odds, staring in the 1930s with the Spanish Civil War. She was also the only one of Ernest Hemingway's four wives who left him because she wanted to continue her own professional career.

Every single non fiction book of Martha Gellhorn is excellent, as she was one of the best reporters (of war or otherwise, female or otherwise) of the XX Century. Her writing on wars or politics has been very seldom surpassed. I must mention "The Face of War" as her best, with all the rest of her reporting and non-fiction books at very close distance.In this one book "Travels with myself and another", Gellhorn chooses several pieces on travelling to the four corners of the world along 40 years. The style is, as always in Gelhorn, superb, dry, sober, illuminating. The final effect is outstanding.And in every piece, it is remarkable how Gellhorn stays away from retorting from the platitudes of a postcard - as in the excellent description of Africa: "I was expecting Out of Africa and got instead Heart of Darkness". Impossible to say more with less words. Africa is, to Gellhorn's eyes, all bad roads, killer mosquitoes and dictators serving European and American interests, while ignoring their fellow citizens welfare. It is what she sees. Her piece on China is equally an eye opener. Travelling there with the "unwilling companion" (obviously her then husband Hemingway) she expects gardens and bamboo trees and finds instead medieval latrines.The best bit, to these eyes, is that on her visit to Russia. Impossible to describe better the dull, bored life of the late Communism.All in all, a wonderful book of an excellent writer. The reason I didn't give the fifth star is that the pieces are rather unbalanced, with Africa taking a third of the book, and some other ones just a few pages. Also, and more importantly, I do believe (after I have read everything Gellhorn has published) that this book was somehow rushed, it could do with a thorough review and correction. Some parts are repetitive (very strange in Gellhorn).But then again, it is priceless and an excellent document of late and post colonialism and its effects.

Memoir intenso per conoscere ancor più da vicino la vita da reporter di Martha Gellhorn, un mito del giornalismo internazionale.

If you want to know how journalism of the raw and rough kind works, that of The Day, this is the book. For any reporter to go where few have gone, to get a story is one thing but to do it as a woman in the times that Gellhorn, did it, caps most coverage tales. She was one of those rare females who prefer the low road in getting the job done. Sure, this highly attractive, spirited woman was alongside Hemingway. when he happened to be present, but her fearless drive to go where few or no women ventured before, makes for an exciting delve into the art of journalistic writing. It's or was, no job for a sissy.

A sickening insight into colonialist behaviour and attitudes in Africa, I stopped reading it. A beautiful writer but unfortunately this book does not stand the test of time and I feel tainted for even having given her disgusting comments audience.

v.pleasant book for travel lovers