Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Review
From my blog review: [...]
“Dispatches from the Edge” would suggest a collection of anecdotes from the various global scenes from which Anderson Cooper has reported, and it is that. Beyond that, though, it is the sort of personal confession that reveals just how psychologically complex and emotionally damaged the seemingly cool newsman really is.
The primary thread concerns the major events of 2005 (the Christmas ‘04 Tsunami and its aftermath, the ongoing war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina) and what Anderson Cooper saw and experienced amongst them. Prior to that year, he had managed to divorce himself from the tragedies upon which he built his journalism career. It’s genuinely evocative to read him outright admit to being bored at home going to movies with friends, just itching to get back to the thrill of a war zone; and just as disturbing to read his frank account of how journalists cope with the inhumanity they are called upon to witness in their professional careers.
Throughout the ‘05 catharsis, Cooper relates key events that shaped him into the person he was prior to the breakthrough chronicled here. Losing his father at the age of 10, and his brother’s suicide years later are two obviously traumatic experiences. Just as he reveals himself more of a thrillseeker than a noble journalist, he confesses some fairly selfish and dark thoughts about his brother. It seems they each coped with their father’s death in different ways; while Anderson committed himself to becoming as entirely independent as possible to remove himself from vulnerability, his brother retreated into himself. Cooper’s unabashed resentment is shocking to read, and yet somehow it is precisely why this memoir is so compelling. Who among us would publicly admit to such sentiments?
Stylistically, Dispatches from the Edge reads as an anthology of journal entries. It could easily have been a collection of blog posts, or the transcription of a podcast. Each segment of each chapter is concise, saying only what is necessary about each theme to convey his point. (And, really, what else would you expect from a professional journalist?) Readers with no interest in Anderson Cooper, journalism or world events will still find something to appreciate about this jarringly honest memoir.
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Feature
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Overview
Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life.
After growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother. As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him.
But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family’s troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale. Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before — ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarejevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda — but he had never seen human misery quite like this. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth.
Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America’s most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters.
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Specifications
In 2005, two tragedies–the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina–turned CNN reporter Anderson Cooper into a media celebrity. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper’s memoir of “war, disasters and survival,” is a brief but powerful chronicle of Cooper’s ascent to stardom and his struggle with his own tragedies and demons. Cooper was 10 years old when his father, Wyatt Cooper, died during heart bypass surgery. He was 20 when his beloved older brother, Carter, committed suicide by jumping off his mother’s penthouse balcony (his mother, by the way, being Gloria Vanderbilt). The losses profoundly affected Cooper, who fled home after college to work as a freelance journalist for Channel One, the classroom news service. Covering tragedies in far-flung places like Burma, Vietnam, and Somalia, Cooper quickly learned that “as a journalist, no matter … how respectful you are, part of your brain remains focused on how to capture the horror you see, how to package it, present it to others.” Cooper’s description of these horrors, from war-ravaged Baghdad to famine-wracked Niger, is poignant but surprisingly unsentimental. In Niger, Cooper writes, he is chagrined, then resigned, when he catches himself looking for the “worst cases” to commit to film. “They die, I live. It’s the way of the world,” he writes. In the final section of Dispatches, Cooper describes covering Hurricane Katrina, the story that made him famous. The transcript of his showdown with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (in which Cooper tells Landrieu people in New Orleans are “ashamed of what is happening in this country right now”) is worth the price of admission on its own. Cooper’s memoir leaves some questions unanswered–there’s frustratingly little about his personal life, for example–but remains a vivid, modest self-portrait by a man who is proving himself to be an admirable, courageous leader in a medium that could use more like him. –Erica C. Barnett
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