Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson

She became a suffragist while attending Syracuse University, where she earned an AB degree in 1914. After World War I, Thompson went to Europe to become a freelance writer, winning an exclusive interview with Empress Zita of Austria. The New York Evening Post named Thompson head of its Berlin bureau. In 1928 she married novelist Sinclair Lewis (the second of her three marriages). After her reporting on the Nazis angered Hitler, Thompson became the first American correspondent to be expelled from Germany in 1934. Two years later she began writing a newspaper column, “On the Record,” for the New York Herald Tribune, which was later syndicated. Thompson developed such a large following that Time magazine called her the second most popular woman in America, after Eleanor Roosevelt. The column ended in 1958, but she continued to write a monthly piece for the Ladies' Home Journal. Her books included New Russia, (1928), I Saw Hitler! (1932), Anarchy or Organization, (1938), Let the Record Speak, (1939), and The Courage to be Happy, (1957).