About the Author...
MARY LAMAR KNIGHT, famed foreign correspondent and lecturer, graduated into the ranks of foreign correspondents while she was on a two-month “tour” of Europe in 1930. The tour lasted for five full years with only brief vacations and assignments at home. At that time Miss Knight was the only woman employed on a full-time basis in the Paris Bureau of the United Press Associations. In this capacity she covered the European continent as a feature writer in the varied fields of women’s fashions, crime and politics.
She reported on the outstanding fashions of the Parisian designers as they paraded their creations into pages of history; she was the first woman since the days of the French Revolution to witness the guillotining of a famous convict in Paris; she interviewed royalty of many nationalities; and, most important of all, she saw and studied the beginnings of World War II: the propaganda build-up, the international deceit and intrigue, the in-human characters of the men who promoted the war and prepared the nations of Europe for their own destruction.
During her varied career, Miss Knight, who is the daughter of the late Dr. Lucian Lamar and Edith Nelson Knight, of Atlanta, Georgia, has worked as a nurse at Bellevue Hospital, New York, to report on a bitter campaign to regulate working conditions for doctors and nurses; she was assigned to the New York Women’s House of Detention to pose as a prostitute, going to jail with Lucky Luciano’s “girls” and latter covered his vice trial in the courtroom; at one time she was assigned the role of a taxi-dance girl, and at another time to join the chorus line of the world-famous “Rockettes” at the lavish Music Hall theater; she was the first woman reporter allowed to invade the training camps of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling prior to their title fight which she covered at ringside. In 1935, the author embarked for China on a Norwegian freighter.
Remaining in China for two years she travelled to most of the principal cities in China, Korea and Manchuria. At the borders of Mongolia she witnessed the beginnings of her RED BLIGHT of today. The Communists were then in the process of developing the tactics, the brutality, the deceit and the methods which they have so far so successfully employed against their homeland and the neighboring countries of Tibet and Korea. In China, 1935-36, Mary Lamar Knight had a 15-year advance in preview of the tragic days that are now immediately ahead for all civilized nations. She returned to China again in 1946, independently covering the Pauley and the Marshall Missions. She met and became personally acquainted with most of the men who dominate today’s great human conflict—Marshall, Wedemeyer, Ambassador Hurley, Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang, Chou En-lai and many others. Herein she was able to objectively view the entire American-Chinese crisis, make a personal analysis of the appalling international situation and draw the conclusions which she presents in RED BLIGHT.
In recent months Miss Knight has spent her time in bringing this vitally enlightening book up-to-the-minute and appearing before many outstanding political, civic and patriotic clubs and organizations as a featured speaker on Communism and its avowed principles of ruling or ruining the earth.
Among Miss Knight’s published works are: On My Own, an autobiography, (MacMillan, 1938); Spies versus Censors (Reader’s Digest, May, 1946) and Red Realm in China (Reader’s Digest, February, 1947). The author was the only woman contributor to We Cover the World, the first symposium of foreign correspondents (Prentice-Hall).
The author is available for personal appearances and speaking engagements. (Fees are variable.)