Journalist Vincent Sheean (1899-1975) was one of the foremost chroniclers of events that defined the first half of the twentieth century. He covered the Spanish Civil War with his friend Ernest Hemingway. He was the only American journalist in Jerusalem when the first Arab uprising erupted in 1929. He shared cigars, cognac, and long evenings of conversation with an out-of-power Winston Churchill during the bleak winter of 1938; a year later, he witnessed Hitler's triumphant arrival in Czechoslovakia. After the outbreak of World War II, he reported on the London Blitz with Ed Murrow. He was in China during the early days of the Communist revolution and was by Mahatma Gandhi's side when the Indian leader was assassinated. Sheean's memoir, Personal History, was a surprise bestseller in 1935. It won him a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired the careers of a generation of journalists.

In this long-overdue biography of Sheean, veteran journalist Tom Hundley delves into Sheean's life and charts the remarkable influence he had in twentieth-century America and Europe. And his influence endures. Sheean's reporting on the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s offers a lesson on how to think about creeping authoritarianism in the United States and Europe. The final chapter of Personal History, in which Sheean narrates his eyewitness account of the first Arab revolt in British Palestine, feels as relevant and fresh today as it was when it was written ninety years ago. Sheean's insights into the nature of the conflict hold lessons for anyone seriously interested in the origins of the Israel-Hamas war.

In today's fractured media landscape, Sheean's story offers a framework for thinking critically about the news-how it is gathered and received-and a model to better interpret what we are being told about the breakdown of institutions in our age of grievance and polarization.