Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World

In this expansive group biography, journalist Cooke (Come Fly the World) profiles three prolific mid-century female journalists and examines the impact their reporting had on both their times and their profession. Rebecca West, Emily “Mickey” Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn wrote about everything from the glitter of Shanghai to the horrors of Dachau; along the way, they were themselves the subjects of many a scandalous story regarding their affairs and divorces. It was an era when women reporters were frequently challenged as not up to the task, but it was also a time when writers were expanding “what a reporter could do in print,” and all three relished this new freedom, crafting voice-driven work that often centered their own travels and travails. Each woman was stunningly independent while also being a mother and occasionally a wife, resulting in complex feelings about domestic life (Hahn told her daughters not to learn how to keep house so it couldn’t be used against them; Gellhorn was obsessed with making her homes into “nests”). The ways in which, for these women, “family life and writing and roaming... braid[ed] together” ended up opening new possibilities for what it means to live a writer’s life for both men and women, Cooke astutely observes. It’s a fascinating study of how three legendary reporters left their mark. (Feb.)