Though it did not center around Capa’s D-Day photos and the related myths, this book’s author felt it necessary to address our research, if only to dismiss it. When even the author of a bit of Capa trivia finds it necessary to engage with our deconstruction of the Capa D-Day legend, that’s progress, and it augurs well for the future of Capa studies. […]
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Lavoie does not intend to contribute to or assess the actual substance of Capa-related research, merely to comment on its semantics. He contents himself with analyzing the language in which that research gets conducted, in order to show that it contains aspects of forensic and juridical rhetoric. Therefore … what, exactly? […] This makes the Capa portions of Landing on the Edge of Eternity a sorry display of little more than copying and pasting that masquerades as historical research and analysis. […] A bit further on (and, in a historian, this is unforgivable), Robert Kershaw actually changes Capa’s own words to conform Capa’s account to the misleading version concocted by Richard Whelan, Capa’s official biographer. … That’s not revisionist historianship; it’s corrupt historianship, inexcusable. […] Cynthia Young has a bad habit that’s fatal to credible scholarship: By dint of her position as the de facto world’s foremost Capa authority, she considers herself entitled to simply make up shit like this. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |