Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa

By Alex Kershaw

Book Overview

Robert Capa was arguably the finest photojournalist of the twentieth century and without doubt its greatest combat photographer-he covered every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the beginnings of Vietnam. An inveterate gambler who coined the dictum "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa risked his life again and again, most dramatically as the only photographer landing with the first wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he created some of the most enduring images ever made with a camera. But the drama in Capa's life wasn't limited to one side of the lens. Born in Budapest as Andre Freidman, Capa fled political repression and anti-Semitism as a teenager by escaping to Berlin, where he first picked up a Leica and then witnessed the rise of Hitler. By the time his images of D-Day appeared in "Life Magazine," he had become a legend, the first photographer to make his calling appear glamorous and sexy, and the model for many of the most intrepid photographers to this day. In 1947, after a decade covering war, he founded a cooperative agency-Magnum-and in the process revolutionized the industry. For the first time, photographers would retain their own copyrights and negatives, and nearly half a century later, Magnum remains the most prestigious agency of its kind. By the time he died, at just forty-one in 1954, Capa was not only the greatest adventurer in photographic history. He had become a colleague and confidant to writers Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway and director John Huston, and a seducer of several of his era's most alluring icons, including Ingrid Bergman. From Budapest in the twenties to Paris in the thirties, from post-war Hollywood to Stalin's Russia, and from New York in the fifties to Indochina, "Blood and Champagne" is a wonderfully evocative account of Capa's life and times. Based on extensive interviews with Capa's friends and contemporaries, as well as FBI and Soviet files and other previously unpublished materials, Alex Kershaw's biography is every bit as compelling as its charismatic subject.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312315643
• ISBN13: 9780312315641
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.7" x 1.2" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

A real life tear jerker. Reads like a novel. I loved it!

I loved this book. It actually made me cry. I had no idea that Robert Capa had an affair with Ingrid Bergman (among others!) and it is brilliantly told. I have read a few of Alex Kershaw's books and the thing I really love about them is that they tell true stories in an exciting way. They really do read like novels -- rather than the usual stuffy, worthy bios that get written that only an obsessive fan of the subject could be bothered to wade through. Deserves to be made into a movie.

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

This book is a story, told to be thrilling and informative and will stand the test of time as the best book written about the trade of war photography. It should be a film because the action and character development are well plotted. And if you want to know, close up, about the great moments of the last century, then here is a ring-side seat on history in the making too. Inspiring stuff. If only there were more biographies written like this.