Last Call at the Hotel Imperial

The incredible story of a trailblazing group of American journalists who traced the rise of fascism in early twentieth century Europe, fell in and out of love with one another, and become the most famous foreign correspondents of their day.

John Gunther. Dorothy Thompson. H.R. Knickerbocker. Vincent ‘Jimmy’ Sheean.

These were the American journalists who built a legacy together. Working intimately, falling in love, having affairs, pouring themselves into letter after letter, this group collectively covered Trotsky, Churchill, Roosevelt, Franco, and eventually the rise of Hitler. Sitting on the vanguard of correspondence, they followed the creeping rise of fascism across Europe and wrote it up for the world.

This intimate study of these journalists and their relationships with one another offers a brilliant, living insight into life on the frontiers of reporting, and of Europe’s changing faces across the early to mid twentieth century.