From the acclaimed author of The Pattons and Patriot Pirates: a book celebrating America's early war correspondents--legends in their time, but mostly forgotten today--who learned their trade in the Civil War and went on to cover twenty years of bloody imperial conflict in Europe and Central Asia. Their harrowing experiences changed their politics, their youthful illusions of war's glory and thrill, and in some cases cost their lives, while also setting examples of globetrotting gallantry that would influence such iconic daredevils as Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt in the decades that followed.

Includes index and bibliographic references.

Nobody's child : 1854-1866 -- American methods : 1865-1870 -- Wild work : 1870-1871 -- Paris is burning: 1871 -- Primitive people : 1871-1873 -- Pure and savage freedom : 1872-1877 -- Red hands : 1876-1877 -- Green leaves in a furnace flame : 1877 -- The pause of an instant : 1877-1890 -- Our people : 1884-1912.