Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist: The Autobiography of Wilfred Burchett

Wilfred Burchett (1911-1983) was one of Australia's most important -- and controversial -- journalists and war correspondents. His remarkable biography, first published in 1980 and now issued in an unexpurgated version co-edited by his son, leads the reader into key moments of twentieth-century history from Hiroshima to Vietnam, guided by an eyewitness who is a writer of passion and insight. Burchett experienced some of the horrors of Nazi Germany at first hand before becoming a war correspondent. He covered the first use of bacteriological warfare (by the Japanese in Central China in 1942) and traveled across India, Burma, and the Pacific. He was the first Westerner to witness and report to the world on the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. He covered the struggles of early Cold War Europe and reported on the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Criticized ferociously by anti-communist groups and intelligence organizations in the U.S., and Australia, he was exiled from his own country when a passport would not be reissued.