On Being a Patton

Robert Patton was 12 years old in 1970 as he sat beside his father in a Times Square theater and watched the newly released film "Patton," starring George C. Scott.

"I couldn't understand why my dad was sobbing during the movie," he recalled. "I guess that's the first time I realized I was the grandson of the famous general I was watching depicted on the big screen."

Before seeing "Patton," the adolescent boy only vaguely grasped the historical importance of the famous World World II commander and knew him as a long-dead grandfather seen in faded photographs and heard about in stories at family gatherings.

More from Paul Grondahl in yesterday's Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Grandson-of-Gen-Patton-examines-war-5458306.php

Robert Patton visited the Writers Institute on April 29th:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/patton_Robert14.html

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Hell Before Breakfast in Publishers Weekly

"Acclaimed historian Patton (The Pattons) focuses on the war correspondent persona and the band of bold adventurers who earned their keep on the frontlines in this detailed salute. A first correspondent whose actions provided the template for all who followed, The Times of London's William H. Russell, respected battle, an appreciation that found him in the thick of the bloodiest clashes including the Battle of Bull Run, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian war, and the Russo-Turkish war. In a no-frills, straightforward narrative, Patton describes the backgrounds of the early pioneers, John Russell Young, George Smalley, Holt White, and Henry Villard, who embraced armed conflict and its horrors, while feeding their dramatic observations to The New York Herald and The New York Tribune. The American publications dueled with each other, such as when Smalley opposed sending untried reporters into the battlefield, instead preferring two experienced correspondents dispatched to each army's headquarters. Some excitement is generated with the sections of the wild and brilliant career of American painter-war correspondent Frank Millet, who bravely covered the 1877 war in the Ottoman Empire. Patton's tribute to these battlefield scribes revives an understanding of why these men mattered." --Publishers Weekly

Patton visits today:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/patton_Robert14.html

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Robert Patton Tuesday, Grandson of General George Patton

Robert Patton, grandson of the legendary WWII General George S. Patton will present his new nonfiction book, Hell Before Breakfast:  America's First War Correspondents Making History and Headlines, from the Battlefields of the Civil War to the Far Reaches of the Ottoman Empire (May 2014), tomorrow, Tuesday, April 29th.

More about the events:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/patton_Robert14.html

Booklist said:  “A fascinating cast of characters…Patton details major conflagrations and social and technological changes amid the gore of war and the prose of reporters of another era.”

More about the book: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/128217/hell-before-breakfast-by-robert-h-patton#praise

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