Blood and Champagne

Robert Capa, one of the finest photojournalists of the twentieth century, covered every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the beginnings of Vietnam. He risked his life again and again, and he created some of the most enduring images ever made with a camera. Born in Budapest as André Friedmann, 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. In 1947, after a decade covering war, he founded a cooperative agency, Magnum, which remains the most prestigious agency of its kind. By the time he died, 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 an extensive 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on extensive interviews with Capa's friends and contemporaries, as well as FBI and Soviet files and other previously unpublished materials, Alex Kershaw's biography is as compelling as its charismatic subject.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.