| "DEATH BE NOT PROUD"
Author: John J. Gunther
Interest Level: Upper Grades (9-12)
ATOS Reading Level: 8.0
AR Points: 8.0
Publisher Recommended Age: 18+
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Book Type: Trade Paperback
Pages: 224
Notes: Mature content
Book Description:
In the book, Gunther records the true story of his teenage son's struggle to overcome a brain tumor, and his ultimate death at the age of seventeen. The story chronicles the period beginning when Johnny experiences the first symptoms of the tumor shortly after being given a clean bill of health. Johnny's complaint of a stiff neck one day leads doctors to operate, thus leading to the discovery of a tumor the size of an orange, according to a doctor.
The book, published in 1949, records in simple detail all the events and tensions that made up the months that Johnny Gunther fought for his life and his parents sought to help him through recourse to every medical possibility then known. When it appears that Johnny has finally overcome the tumor, he dies of a cerebral hemorrage, which occurs the day of a medical checkup the day before he and his family are to leave on vacation.
Partly because of its stark honesty about the pain that this kind of struggle causes a family, and partly because of its refreshingly revealing portrait of a brilliant young man (he discovered a new way to liquefy ammonia) struck down too young by incurable illness, Death Be Not Proud became a best-selling book that is still popular today.
Themes: How death and illness humble people.
The story in the book was eventually made into a TV movie in 1975, starring Robby Benson as Johnny Gunther, and Arthur Hill as John Gunther.
Book Group Guide:
Find a Book Group Guide under the "Learn More" tab above!
Book Reviews:
New York Times: If courage is the antidote to pain and grief, the disease and the cure are both in this book...a story of great unselfishness and great heroism."
Other Interesting Information:
The story in the book was eventually made into a TV movie in 1975, starring Robby Benson as Johnny Gunther, and Arthur Hill as John Gunther.
About the Author:
John Gunther (August 30, 1901 – May 29, 1970) was an American journalist and author whose success came primarily in the 1940s and 1950s with a series of popular sociopolitical works known as the "Inside" books. He is best known today for the memoir Death Be Not Proud about the death of his teenage son, Johnny Gunther, from a brain tumor.
Gunther grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, where he was literary editor of the student paper.
From 1924 to 1936, Gunther was assigned to the London bureau of the Chicago Daily News. Gunther writes, "I was at one time or another in charge of Daily News offices in London, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Rome, and Paris, and I also visited Poland, Spain, the Balkans, and Scandinavia. I have worked in every European country except Portugal. I saw at first hand the whole extraordinary panorama of Europe from 1924 to 1936."
The books that made Gunther famous in his time were the "Inside" series of continental surveys. For each book, Gunther traveled extensively through the area the book covered, interviewed political, social, and business leaders, talked with average people, reviewed area statistics, and then wrote a lengthy overview of what he had learned and how he interpreted it.
Gunther married journalist Frances Fineman in 1927. Their first child, a daughter, Judith, died suddenly at the age of four months. Their son John Gunther, Jr. (Johnny) was born in 1929. Johnny died at the young age of 17 from a brain tumor. John Gunther's book Death Be Not Proud is about Johnny's life. John and Frances Gunther divorced in 1944.
Gunther married Jane Perry Vandercook in 1948 and the couple adopted a son. |
