Josephine Herbst, one of the most active literary figures of the Depression decade, was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and died in New York City. In the early twenties she lived in Germany amidst the political and cultural turmoil of the Weimar Republic, then in Paris, where she formed friendships with Ernest Hemingway, Nathan Asch, and John Herrmann, whom she would marry in 1926. Throughout the 1930s she was interested in political dissent and divided her time between travels as a special correspondent and periods of writing at her country home in Erwinna, Pennsylvania. In addition to investigating unrest among midwestern farmers, she was in Cuba during the general strike of 1935, managed to speak to members of the underground opposition to Hitler's regime in Germany, and during the Spanish Civil War was one of the few women correspondents allowed to visit the front lines. After Pearl Harbor she volunteered...