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For Ernest Hemingway, successful writing required creating something that no one else had created before —but it also hinged on two elements beyond one’s control: Luck and timing. By this standard, the historian Deborah Cohen has scored big-time: Her book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is bringing out disturbingly prescient material at exactly the right moment.
Ms Cohen’s ambitious ensemble biography documents the intertwined careers, friendships and sex lives of four hugely influential correspondents and commentators primarily covering Europe in the lead-up to World War II. Like Hemingway (who occasionally barges in), the book’s four stars —John Gunther, H R
