Dorothy Thompson, newspaper columnist and political commentator, was a respected virtuoso of her craft. Vitality was the outstanding quality of her writing, her broadcasts, and her life. For those who read her column in the New York Herald Tribune and listened to her broadcasts, she was a voice of courage and exceptional fluency.

Thompson was born in Lancaster, New York, the eldest of three children of Peter and Margaret Grierson Thompson. Her mother died when Thompson was eight; two years later her genial father, an English-born Methodist preacher, married the church organist, Elizabeth Abbott, a plain and unpleasantly solemn spinster of forty. In 1905 the family moved to Gowanda, New York, where Thompson entered high school. However, hostility between Thompson and her stepmother resulted in the girl's being sent to live with relatives in Chicago. While there she was enrolled in Lewis Institute, a school noted for high educational...