The Belgian Congo, no longer suffering under the reign of terror that still lives on in popular imagination, now struggles to develop its natural resources, in what was then at least a rich but relatively underpopulated land. White immigration is discouraged to prevent the racial tensions suffered by the British colonies, and white settlers get as much political rights as natives, which is to say none. "The European community in the Congo...must be the largest group of white people totally devoid of voting power anywhere in the free world"

Beginning in the late 1950s, a different set of readers—readers like my mother—took up Gunther’s book. English teachers assigned Death Be Not Proud; the tribute to selfless bravery fit well on civics syllabi too. It became a popular selection for teen book clubs. Young readers wrote to Gunther in increasing numbers. They wished they’d known Johnny: He was the sort of boy they’d like to befriend or, someday, marry. They saw him as a model against which their own character should be measured, certain that they fell far short of his example. “I only wish that I could be half the person Johnny was!” wrote one high-school girl from Scarsdale, New York. Commencing in Northern Africa, Gunter spends a lot of time explaining Morocco. At this time, Morocco consisted of the main body of land Morocco administered by the French; Spanish Morocco; the Tangier International Zone. Then moves on to French controlled Algeria, and Tunisia. Johnny with his mother after his brain-cancer diagnosis, which he received in the spring of 1946 (Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America / Harvard University)

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He worked briefly in the city as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, but he soon moved to Europe to be a correspondent with the Daily News London bureau, where he covered Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East.

Spain - (Spanish Morocco, Spanish Sahara (Western Sahara), Spanish Guinea (Equatorial Guinea).) Spanish Morocco is the only of the three which gets more than a few sentences. Spanish Morocco is heavily militarised, and doesn't really get a short summary from Gunther. Frances’s afterword was the most personal and unabashedly emotional of the three parts. She wrote about her relationship with her son, her attempt to “create of him a newer kind of human being: an aware person, without fear, and with love.” To remake a war-ravaged world required people who cared about others, and Frances had started with her son. She’d reared him to become a cooperative rather than competitive person. But now that he was dead, she was consumed by guilt. She felt remorse about sending Johnny to boarding school; she regretted the divorce: “I wished we had loved Johnny more when he was alive.” Gunther has written a load of books, including a number of the Inside... series, Inside Africa appears to be the largest, as one might expect when it comes to summarising this continent of variation. From the Sahara in the north, the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Central Africa, the Ethiopian highlands and other mountain ranges, the various rivers and lakes and the savanna of east and southern Africa. And that is just the geography.

According to Michael Bloch, Gunther enjoyed a same-sex relationship in the 1930s in Vienna with the future Leader of the British Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell. [7]

The books that made Gunther famous in his time were the "Inside" series of continental surveys. For each book, Gunther traveled extensively through the area the book covered, interviewed political, social, and business leaders; talked with average people; reviewed area statistics; and then wrote a lengthy overview of what he had learned and how he interpreted it. Of course even by this point there were independent countries on the continent. You will get to feel the presence of men like Nasser and Haile Selassie, fully knowing that they're at the head of a new age. Cuthbertson, Ken (October 2002). Inside: The Biography of John Gunther. pp.243–244. ISBN 9780759232884. Impatient to get to Europe, where, he believed, the best American writing was being done, Mr. Gunther in 1922 in structed the university to mail him his diploma and Phi Beta Kappa key and, several weeks before commencement, set out on the first of his scores of trips abroad. In addition to the "Inside" series and related volumes, Gunther wrote eight novels and three biographies. The most notable of them are Bright Nemesis, The Troubled Midnight, Roosevelt in Retrospect (published in 1950) and Eisenhower, a biography of the famous general released in 1952, the year that Dwight Eisenhower was elected President. In addition, Gunther published several books for young readers, including a biography of Alexander the Great in 1953, and Meet Soviet Russia, a two-volume adaptation of Inside Russia Today in 1962.French North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, is alive with nationalistic agitation and occasional violence. France has done many notable things in North Africa and has followed a policy of assimilation of the natives into French culture, and in the case of Algeria of political equality with citizens of Metropolitan France. The case of French North Africa is not yet desperate. Morocco at least is far from ready for independence, but whether or not the French can persuade the Arabs and the Berbers in this vast territory to seek their future under French guidance and coöperation remains to be seen. Egypt of course is a case of its own, being an independent country, as is Ethiopia. It is when one gets to British East Africa, including Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda, that the racial tensions become acute. Kenya is the most disturbed of these countries because there the white settlers really came to stay and look over the best of the farming country. Their continued tenure there is extremely problematical. At Agadir in Morocco, reports Peter Kolosimo, the French captain Lafanechere "discovered a complete arsenal of hunting weapons including five hundred double-edged axes weighing seventeen and a half pounds, i.e. twenty times as heavy as would be convenient for modern man. Apart from the question of weight, to handle the axe at all one would need to have hands of a size appropriate to a giant with a stature of at least 13 feet." 2 (See Australian Giants; La Tene; South American Giants) In 1922, he was awarded a Bachelor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago, where he was literary editor of the student paper. Cuthbertson, Ken (1992). Inside: The Biography of John Gunther. Bonus Books. pp. 5–8. ISBN 978-0929387703.

Peirce, Neal R. (1973). The Great Plains States of America: People, Politics, and Power in the Nine Great Plains States. W. W. Norton & Company. pp.11–13. ISBN 9780393053494. Gunther wrote without euphemism. His metaphors were precise, his descriptions unflinching. The effect of that first surgery was akin to the “explosion of a .45-caliber bullet,” a doctor told him. He made use of a clinical vocabulary, translating the language of the medical case report: Papilledema, he explained, was swelling of the optic nerve; a ventriculogram required drilling holes through the skull. The surgeons left Johnny’s skull open so that the tumor wouldn’t be driven inward; the flap of scalp that covered the soft spot was the size of a man’s hand. When the tumor began to grow again, a few months after the remission began, the surgeon excavated more than four inches into the brain, unable to find healthy tissue.

And yet, adolescents were so gripped by Death Be Not Proud precisely because it wasn’t fiction. Like Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, which was translated into English in 1952, Gunther’s memoir demonstrated how life had outpaced fiction, as “millions of people all over the world,” in the words of one Connecticut girl, shared in the “tragedy of your son’s death.” It wasn’t “like the average book,” she added, “perhaps because this really happened.” Teenagers requested photos of Johnny, details of his science experiments, more information about the couple’s divorce. “Some people would say, ‘Oh, its only a story, don’t let it bother you’,” one reader wrote; “but when you realize that it actually took place, it makes a person stop and think.” In 1936, two French archaeologists, Lebeuf and Griaule, led an expedition to Chad in North Central Africa. As they crossed the plains they saw some areas covered with small mounds. They also found large numbers of these mounds around Fort Lamy and Goulfeil. Deciding to investigate, they dug up several egg-shaped funeral jars that contained the remains of a gigantic race, along with pieces of their jewelry and their works of art. 1 These giants, according to the natives, were called the Saos. Why … should Texas have what seem to be the prettiest girls in the world? … Walk across the campus at Austin, or roam the downtown streets of Dallas; there are more Miss Americas per square yard than anywhere else in the country per square mile.” a b "Guide to the John Gunther Papers 1935–1967". University of Chicago Library. 2006 . Retrieved April 18, 2013.