The Last Book I Read

As a longtime fan of Bill Mauldin's work, I have to say it's about time that someone delivered a comprehensive biography of the legendary cartoonist. Todd DePastino has done a fine job fleshing out the contours of Mauldin's long, productive career which began when he was still a teenager, then exploded with his work from the frontlines of World War II (by the way, DePastino has also edited a complete collection of Mauldin's wartime cartoons, called Willie & Joe: The WWII Years, which is also outstanding). Having read several of Mauldin's own memoirs (I discovered A Sort of a Saga and The Brass Ring back in the seventies and have read both multiple times), there's a bit of deja vu through the early chapters of this book, but DePastino draws on a variety of other sources to put Mauldin's experiences into a broader historical context in relation to the military campaigns that he chronicled, and those aspects of 1940s military culture that reveal the nuances of many Mauldin cartoons that I previously missed. Even more interesting from my perspective was the story of Mauldin's post-World War II career, as I only knew small bits and pieces beyond the fact that he became a Pulitzer winning editorial cartoonist (he'd earlier won a Pulitzer for one of his wartime cartoons as well). Throughout his career, Mauldin remained a somewhat idiosyncratic but consistent commentator, serving as a surrogate and often an advocate for those who did not always have the ability (or means) to command the kind of audience that Mauldin eventually built. It's to his credit that he never significantly compromised in his principles, and to DePastino's that he has so fully captured the circumstances and personal characteristics that made Mauldin so important.