Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival
		Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

基本信息·出版社：Harper Paperbacks
·页码：240 页
·出版日期：2007年05月
·ISBN：0061136689
·条形码：9780061136689
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语

内容简介 在线阅读本书

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.

作者简介

Anderson Cooper joined CNN in 2001 and has anchored his own program, Anderson Cooper 360°, since 2003. He had previously served as a correspondent for ABC News and was a foreign correspondent for Channel One News. Cooper has won several awards for his work, including an Emmy. He graduated from Yale University in 1989 and also studied Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi. He writes regularly for Details magazine.

媒体推荐 From Booklist
This hunky--but taken seriously, nevertheless--CNN reporter and anchor really made a name for himself during his sensitive live coverage of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But Cooper, as he makes graphically and poignantly clear in this memoir of his journalistic career, has been in several other hot spots around the world as well, learning his trade in a big way and earning his stripes to move up the news-show ladder. In straightforward yet passionate prose, the author recounts his experiences not only in Louisiana and Mississippi but also in sniper-riddled Sarajevo, famine-plagued Niger, tsunami-destroyed Southeast Asia, and civil-war-ravaged Somalia. At the same time, Cooper takes a look inward, at his motivations in gravitating to dangerous adventures, and at his family history and his relations to his late father and brother and his famous mother (Gloria Vanderbilt, for those who didn't know). He scrutinizes how those relations helped formulate his life view and compelled him to follow his dreams and desires. Cooper is both respected and popular; expect the same attitude toward his book. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

USA Today
"Powerful. . . . Packs a visceral punch. . . . Cooper opens a tantalizing window into his own soul." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

People
"Cooper is a storyteller with plenty of heart. . . . A smart, soulful pageturner." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
编辑推荐 Amazon.com
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
HarperCollins touts the handsome, prematurely gray host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°as the "prototype for a twenty-first century newsman." Sadly, that statement is all too true. This brief, self-involved narrative reaffirms a troubling cultural shift in news coverage: journalists used to cover the story; now, more than ever, they are the story. Cooper is an intrepid reporter: he's traveled to tsunami-ravaged Asia, famine-plagued Niger, war-torn Somalia and Iraq, and New Orleans post-Katrina. Here, however, the plights of the people and places he visits take a backseat to the fact that Cooper is, well, there. The Yale-educated son of heiress and designer Gloria Vanderbilt weaves personal tragedies (at 10, he lost his father to heart disease and later his older brother to suicide) awkwardly into far graver stories of suffering he's observing. Even when he plies the reader with his own unease ("the more sadness I saw, the more success I had") and obliquely decries TV news's demand for images of extreme misery ("merely sick won't warrant more than a cut-away shot"), he seems to place himself in front of his subjects. Cooper is an intelligent, passionate man and he may be a terrific journalist. But this book leaves one feeling he's little more than a television personality. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From AudioFile
Anderson Cooper has a pleasant, distinctive, and recognizable voice, but that's not the reason he's effective as the reader of this memoir of war, disasters, and survival. The book is a compelling listen because Cooper is a talented writer, filling his text with riveting images and compelling phrases. For example, writing about tsunami victims dying after being thrown through the roof of a house needs no vocal enhancement. The images speak for themselves. But Cooper's reading is not without energy and emotion. He parcels them out, using them for effect at just the right moments. Cooper moves effectively between reporting on the cataclysmic events of 2005 (from the tsunami through Hurricane Katrina) and reflecting on his childhood and early professional career. His discussion of the death of his father is particularly moving. The audio concludes with an interesting interview with the author. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist
This hunky--but taken seriously, nevertheless--CNN reporter and anchor really made a name for himself during his sensitive live coverage of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But Cooper, as he makes graphically and poignantly clear in this memoir of his journalistic career, has been in several other hot spots around the world as well, learning his trade in a big way and earning his stripes to move up the news-show ladder. In straightforward yet passionate prose, the author recounts his experiences not only in Louisiana and Mississippi but also in sniper-riddled Sarajevo, famine-plagued Niger, tsunami-destroyed Southeast Asia, and civil-war-ravaged Somalia. At the same time, Cooper takes a look inward, at his motivations in gravitating to dangerous adventures, and at his family history and his relations to his late father and brother and his famous mother (Gloria Vanderbilt, for those who didn't know). He scrutinizes how those relations helped formulate his life view and compelled him to follow his dreams and desires. Cooper is both respected and popular; expect the same attitude toward his book. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

USA Today
"Powerful. . . . Packs a visceral punch. . . . Cooper opens a tantalizing window into his own soul." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

People
"Cooper is a storyteller with plenty of heart. . . . A smart, soulful pageturner." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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