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Though widely hailed as a reporter, Gunther is at least as good a rewrite-man. He can take widely scattered strands of information—from books, statistics, official reports, newspaper clippings—and weave them into a pattern that is not only meaningful but brightly his own. Says "Jimmy" Sheean: "He is no mere compiler, for all his massive array of facts. He has repeatedly proved readable to a degree which no assembly of facts could explain. The zest with which he relishes his material gives it the breathless flavor of discovery every time, even aside from the liveliness of the writing." Gunther's success as a popularizer also springs from his skill in communicating ideas in terms of people. "Gunther is a firm believer in the Great Man theory," Critic Fadiman points out. "The picturesque foci are the men themselves. This is how you make institutionalized power clear. It's more interesting to talk about the Pope than the Catholic Church."
Three-Day S.O.B. Gunther's Insides have improved almost steadily as he has kept turning them out; he concedes that the years have made him "more guarded and judicious." Says he: "All those books have been a process of educating myself at the public's expense." With Inside Africa (952 pages covering 44 countries), he drew widespread praise from scholars and specialists. Inside Russia Today, in some ways his most challenging assignment, is probably his best book yet.
Inevitably, he will be chided for Russia's errors of facts and judgment, for gall in attempting so huge a task, and glibness in its execution. In fact, though the book is sprinkled with such minor bobbles as his reference to a nonexistent 25-kopek piece, these are heavily outweighed by his sound reporting, his artful wrap-up of others' findings, and his sober conclusions. Unlike most books on Russia. Gunther's Soviet survey is fortified with perspective gained on three other professional sojourns between 1928 and 1939 for as much as five months at a time. Chuckles Gunther: "When people ask how that s.o.b. dared visit a new country for three days and write about it like an authority, I feel like asking. 'How long did Gibbon spend in Constantinople?' Of course. Gibbon never visited Constantinople."
Months before he set out to inspect Russia in 1956, Gunther buried his Roman nose in books, digests of Soviet newspapers, and a magpie's mountain of clips that he has amassed in more than 30 years. As always when mounting an expedition, Reporter Gunther wrote to dozens of functionaries whom he hoped to interview—and got three replies. Armed with standard 30-day tourist visas, Reporter Gunther and his chic, blonde wife Jane, 41, flew into Moscow in October at the height of the Hungarian uprisings.