Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front

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. "

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/17/2008
ISBN: 9780393061833
Pages: 370
Weight: 1.46lbs
Size: 9.46h x 6.46w x 1.09d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2007 pg. 47
Publishers Weekly 11/12/2007 pg. 46
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2007 pg. 1187
Library Journal 12/15/2007 pg. 127
Booklist 12/01/2007 pg. 6
Entertainment Weekly 02/29/2008 pg. 65
New York Times Book Review 03/09/2008 pg. 26
New York Times Book Review 03/02/2008 pg. 12
Reference and Research Bk News 05/01/2008 pg. 284