The Dragon From Chicago

Description

For fans of unheralded women’s stories, a captivating look at Sigrid Schultz—one of the earliest reporters to warn Americans of the rising threat of the Nazi regime

“No other American correspondent in Berlin knew so much of what was going on behind the scene as did Sigrid Schultz.” — William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

We are facing an alarming upsurge in the spread of misinformation and attempts by powerful figures to discredit facts so they can seize control of narratives. These are threats American journalist Sigrid Schultz knew all too well. The Chicago Tribune‘s Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941, Schultz witnessed Hitler’s rise to power and was one of the first reporters—male or female—to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism.

In The Dragon From Chicago, Pamela D. Toler draws on extensive archival research to unearth the largely forgotten story of Schultz’s years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through the Nazi rise to power and Allied air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front-page stories and her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a “freak,” Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats.

Sharp and enlightening, Schultz’s story provides a powerful example for how we can reclaim truth in an era marked by the spread of disinformation and claims of “fake news.””As the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief in Berlin, Sigrid Schultz interviewed Hitler, broke the story of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and reported firsthand from the death camps. She deserves to be far better known than she is, and in The Dragon from Chicago, Pamela Toler admirably rescues her legacy. Intelligent, perceptive, and thoughtfully written, this is the definitive work on a foreign correspondent who shattered gender stereotypes and fought for the truth against lies and propaganda — a valuable lesson for our time as well as her own.”
—Matthew Goodman, author of Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World

“With documents and historical context presented in crisp, inviting prose, Pamela Toler has re-notched the place of Sigrid Schultz in that intriguing band of American correspondents of the 1920s to the 1940s—both men and women—who worked at the forefront of international reporting and news analysis.”
—Brooke Kroeger, author of Undaunted: How Women Changed American JournalismPamela D. Toler, PhD, translates history for a popular audience, going beyond the familiar boundaries of American history to tell stories from other parts of the world as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar. Her work has appeared in American Scholar, Aramco World, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Ms., and Time.com. She is the author of ten books of popular history for adults and children, including Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War (a nonfiction companion to the PBS historical drama Mercy Street), Through the Minefields, and Women Warriors: An Unexpected History.US

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