Croswell Bowen
| Croswell Bowen | |
|---|---|
Croswell Bowen
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| Born | February 12, 1905 |
| Died | July 15, 1971 (aged 66) |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation | writer; political reporter activist journalist, biographer |
Croswell Bowen (1905–1971) was an American political reporter, activist journalist, and biographer who contributed extensively to newspapers and magazines in the 1940s and 1950s. For his activist journalism, he was awarded a Benjamin Franklin Citation for an investigative report on low-level radiation risks, "The New Invisible Death Around Us." As a biographer, his Curse of the Misbegotten, finalist for the National Book Award, was the first-full-length biography of Nobel Prize–winning dramatist Eugene O'Neill.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, he was educated at the Choate School, Yale University, the Sorbonne, and the New School for Social Research.
Bowen made an early name for himself as a reporter, the "Rover Boy of Park Row," clattering down the stairs of the World Building, press card stuck in the brim of his fedora, breaking through police barriers calling out “I’m Bowen of the INS!" In Washington, DC, as an International News Service reporter, Bowen covered high-level government press conferences, where the atmosphere was more gentlemanly. Reporters carried walking sticks and submitted written questions in advance. Ignoring that custom, he directly grilled Secretary of State Stimson on the Mukden incident. His connection to the INS ended thereafter.
Returned to New York's Greenwich Village, Bowen joined the company of the writers, artists and editors who gathered at the evening salon of best-selling popular historian Carl Carmer. His essay “I Was a Rich Man’s Son” appeared in a 1935 collection, the Forum and Century.
Having studied photography with Berenice Abbott at the New School, Bowen's opportunity to combine photography and writing came when Carl Carmer hired him to research the lives and lore of Hudson River folk for a volume in The Rivers of America series edited by Constance Lindsay Skinner. A prose/photography book of Bowen’s own followed, The Hudson: Great River of the Mountains published in 1940, its text and pictures showing the influence of the Federal Writers' Project version of American literary regionalism. When Life commissioned Margaret Bourke-White to photograph the Hudson, Bowen and Carmer went with her as guides.
In 1941, he joined the American Field Service as an official photographer, was wounded during the battle of Tobruk in 1942, and received the Africa Star and the British Empire Medal.Back From Tobruk, his account of that experience, was published in 2012.
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