I love the nonchalant way that Gruber relates all her incredible feats: skip several years of schooling? It's because the classes were so full that they moved her up to another class; get PhD in essentially six months halfway through a one-year fellowship in 30s Germany as an American-Jewish student and be the youngest person in the world at the time to do so? It was just the whim of the German supervisor who wanted an American student to do analysis on Virginia Woolf works; be the first American woman journalist to visit and report on the Soviet Arctic? It was just the novelty of the idea that meant she was able to overcome so many bureaucratic hurdles.

I'm simplifying Gruber's own brisk almost-oblivious narration. But the feats speak for themselves. Gruber is clearly aware of the unconventional path she was cutting at the time but her determination - however retrospective it might be - made things seem inevitable. I also really enjoyed that beyond her intellectual and professional achievements, Gruber seemed to put more effort in the book in describing the emotional impacts of her schooltime crushes and relationships. She can do it all!

The book ends after her second visit to the Soviet Arctic, pre-WWII, covering only up to Gruber's mid-twenties. Having read a little about her later accomplishments, it seems safe to say that Gruber was not just a child-wonder but truly a woman with incredible drive and passion. Modern memoirs sometimes come with criticism of, the author is only 25! how could their life possibly fill a book! Well, Ruth Gruber's is how. ( )

Gruber accomplished more in her first 25 years than most do in their lifetime. An amazing and brilliant woman, interesting fact, at 20 years old she was (at the time) the youngest person in the world to earn a doctorate. This book covers her first 25 years as she struggled to get jobs as a writer and eventually became a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. I would easily recommend this book for young women looking for a feminist to emulate. I'll be reading Inside of Time, published in 2002 at the age of 91, chronicling more of her amazing life. ( )

Ruth Gruber's autobiography of her early life takes us only to the mid-1930s when she was 24. I found the section on Germany and the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party much more interesting than the Soviet Arctic, and both more interesting than growing up in Brooklyn. I was bothered, however, by the so-called verbatim conversations that would have happened 60 to 70 years before this book was written. Notes or not, diaries or not, that amount of (perfect) recall seemed pretty far-fetched to me. As a result, I wondered, maybe unfairly, about some of the details of her exploits. Regardless of those reservations, fascinating reading. ( )

All I could think was that this woman accomplished more than I have in my entire life by the time she was 24.

I don't even remember how I found this book, and I opened it one day just to browse through it, only to have powered through three chapters. Her life is astounding. You will need a map to follow her story even if you are a well-travelled and intelligent person. The writing is clear and easy to read and the stories are fascinating.

She is 101, and still with us. Which does not surprise me in the last. ( )

In [Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent], Ruth Gruber recounts her first twenty-five years, including her early development as a writer and foreign correspondent. Born in 1911 Brooklyn to Jewish immigrant parents, Gruber from an early age exhibited an independence and intellectual curiosity far beyond expectations for females of the time. Opportunity to escape her tradition-bound future presented itself when she was granted a fellowship to pursue doctoral studies at the University of Cologne in Germany. It was here that she began achievement of a series of “firsts”. At age 20, she became the youngest person in the world to receive a Ph.D., all the more notable for being granted by a German institution to a Jewish American, during a period when Hitler and the Nazi party were building their power. In an increasingly dangerous political climate, Gruber placed herself at personal risk with a return trip to Europe, Germany, Poland and Russia under a fellowship for “creative research”, to study women living under fascism, communism and democracy. Her travels during this period ended with two trips to the Soviet Arctic, where she became the first foreign correspondent to visit and interview both officials and gulag inmates.

This early memoir was first published in 1991, many years later than the events that Gruber describes. During the intervening years, she was deeply involved with the plight of Jewish refugees, both as an official of the federal government and as a writer and humanitarian. It is therefore surprising that she does not delve more deeply into the growing Nazi threat that she observed or the conditions encountered in the Soviet gulags. Although she describes the fears of her Jewish friends and relates having witnessed some frightening events, Gruber seems to have felt distanced from the danger by her American passport. Her writing reflects this distance, seeming to lack the sense of immediacy and apprehension I expected from a witness to alarming world events. While I enjoyed this interesting book by a remarkable woman, I can’t help but feel that Gruber missed an opportunity to make it so much more. ( )