Up Front FROM THE PUBLISHER
Up Front by Bill Mauldin is one of the most famous books to emerge from the Second World War, a classic in every sense of the word. In his drawings of the infantry dog-faces Willie and Joe, done while he himself fought in campaigns in Sicily and Italy, Mauldin created the immortal archetypes of the American fighting man. He knew, as one who had been there himself on the front lines and in the slit trenches, drenched with mud and rain, that Willie and Joe - with their unshaven faces, their gallows humor, their fortitude, and their dislike of privilege and cant - exemplify something enduring and surely noble about Americans at war. He knew their gripes, their fears, their jokes, and their opinions, and he recorded their talk with the most pungent accuracy. As for the timelessness of this book, David Halberstam puts it best: "One senses that if a war reporter who had been with Hannibal or Napoleon saw Mauldin's work, he would know immediately that the work was right." This new edition of Up Front is being published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. It reproduces the exact design of the interior of the original 1946 edition as well as its front cover art. Up Front endures today as a piece of living history and a potent reminder of the sacrifices made by the men who fight our wars, whether that fighting takes place in Italy or France or Korea or Vietnam or the Persian Gulf.
FROM THE CRITICS
R. C. Harvey - Comics Buyers Guide
The best book about war and life in an army...a classic of both prose and pictures.
R.C. Harvey
The best book about war and life in an army...a classic of both prose and pictures. —Comics Buyers Guide
Library Journal
Speaking of Americana . With the memory of the war as fresh as the ink on the pages, Mauldin's text and drawings of the American dogface GI in combat became a classic the minute it rolled off the press in 1945 and remains an essential title for libraries. This edition contains a new foreword by Stephen Ambrose. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Mauldin's classic portrait of the World War II combat soldier is being reissued in this facsimile edition to coincide with the 50th anniversary of V-E Day on April 29. Though Mauldin was known for his cartoons of dogfaces "Willie" and "Joe," reviewers praised his prose, with the New York Times calling Up Front a "vigorous, brash, youthful but excellent book."
BookList - Gilbert Taylor
Reprised here is the classic saga of Willie and Joe, Mauldin's GI "dogfaces" who slogged their way through cartoons set in Italy and France. For frontline black humor, the pair's war-weary image--slouched shoulders, dented helmets, torn uniforms, month-old beards, booze bottle in hand--combined with Mauldin's starkly angular, expressionistic shading and mordant captions yielded an ineffable effect matched by no other illustrator in World War II. He drew them originally for "Stars and Stripes", the U.S. Army's newspaper, and many a picture annoyed top brass who wanted to censor him for tweaking the officers' naiveteabout combat or their privileges in rear areas. He wrote the text for folks back home, explaining the background of incidents inspiring his black-and-white palette, and trenchantly sketched out the character of the average infantryman fighting the great crusade. To dogfaces, talk of the "cause" was alien; surviving was the only form of winning. Mauldin's book epitomizes their war. A time-proven and memorable contemporary piece.
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