Melville Jacoby was a U.S. war correspondent during the Sino-Japanese War and, later, the Second World War, writing about the Japanese advances from Chongqing, Hanoi, and Manila.
He was also a relative of Bill Lascher, a journalist–specifically, the cousin of Bill’s grandmother. Bill has now collected Mel’s work in a book: A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War (Blacksmith Books: 2024), with photos detailing Mel’s early days as an exchange student in China, then his later work as journalist…and propagandist for Chiang Kai-shek in wartime Chongqing, then as a correspondent for Time and Life in the Philippines right as the Japanese invade.
Bill is also the author of the 2016 book Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two World War II Correspondents and their Epic Escape Across the Pacific (William Morrow: 2016), also about Mel Jacoby and his wife Annalee Jacoby. He is also a freelance journalist.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of A Danger Shared. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.
Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
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Bill Lascher, "A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War" (Blacksmith Books, 2024) | Asian Review of Books podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
