Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir($20.45Value)

Description

David Greenway, a journalist’s journalist in the tradition of Michael Herr, David Halberstam, and Dexter Filkins. In this vivid memoir, he tells us what it’s like to report a war up close. Reporter David Greenway was at the White House the day Kennedy was assassinated. He was in the jungles of Vietnam in that war’s most dangerous days, and left Saigon by helicopter from the American embassy as the city was falling. He was with Sean Flynn when Flynn decided to get an entire New Guinea village high on hash, and with him hours before he disappeared in Cambodia. He escorted John le Carre around South East Asia as he researched The Honourable Schoolboy. He was wounded in Vietnam and awarded a Bronze Star for rescuing a Marine. He was with Sidney Schanberg and Dith Pran in Phnom Penh before the city descended into the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Greenway covered Sadat in Jerusalem, civil war and bombing in Lebanon, ethnic cleansing and genocide the Balkans, the Gulf Wars (both), and reported from Afghanistan and Iraq as they collapsed into civil war. This is a great adventure story—the life of a war correspondent on the front lines for five decades, eye-witness to come of the most violent and heroic scenes in recent history. As a foreign correspondent for several newspapers, Greenway was an eyewitness to some of the most significant international events of the past five decades, from the fall of Saigon to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans to the horrors of both Gulf Wars. With an astute sense of the broader history behind conflicts, Greenway explores the harrowing process of shaking off colonial European powers and fighting for freedom and independence. He recalls covering demonstrations in Cairo, the March on Washington in 1963, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing parallels between the ways the desire for freedom and justice play out around the globe. He recounts his own steep learning curve and the allure of war reporting to romantics and cynics alike. Greenway chronicles not only the wars but also the enormous changes in journalism in the last 50 years, noting the gentility of the early press versus later informality, changes in writing style and even how copy was delivered as technology advanced, and changes in geopolitical perspectives. This is a fascinating look at one man’s career and 50 years of war, violence, and adventure. --Vanessa Bush “An excellent primer to America's history . . . it's also guaranteed to whet any budding, young journalist's desire to cover war in far-flung places.” ― Associated Press “Passages such as that one—and there are indeed others—are what elevate ‘Foreign Correspondent’ well above the run of the journalistic mill. It’s easy for journalism to turn one into a cynic, but Greenway seems not to have succumbed.” -- Jonathan Yardley ― the Washington Post “Greenway’s firsthand experiences add gravitas to his common-sense take on foreign policy. The real strengths of the book, however, are the vivid descriptions of life during wartime.” ― Publishers Weekly “Greenway tells his story with freshness and color, and becoming touches of humility.” ― Columbia Journalism Review “With an astute sense of the broader history behind conflicts, Greenway explores the harrowing process of shaking off colonial European powers and fighting for freedom and independence. … [A] fascinating look at one man’s career and 50 years of war, violence, and adventure.” ― Booklist “Greenway provides fascinating detail on the day-to-day travails of the foreign correspondent… Frank, seasoned, expert observations on the folly of U.S. military intervention.” ― Kirkus Reviews “[Greenway] doesn’t just tell war stories (of which he has a million), but he observes the world and analyzes the way it has changed, and continues to change. All of this is delivered in the steady, clear prose of a veteran writer for the Boston Globe and Washington Post. It’s a book to make you fall in love with newspapers all over again.” ― Minneapolis Star-Tribune “…should be read by journalism students everywhere….Greenway gives a sense of reporting in an era when journalists were truly ‘correspondents,’ sending dispatches to bridge a gap in distance and time. He attentively distinguishes the various cultures of Southeast Asia—Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and, of course, Vietnam. He stayed there until the final day.” ― The Wall Street Journal “Now we have a memoir that takes the title of Hitchcock’s film and provides a thought-provoking counterpoint to it...Greenway’s memoir is liberally peppered with happy recollections of comradery with fellow correspondents, to whom he throws many bouquets. If these enliven the story, the book’s chief virtue lies in being a succinct primer on post-World War II American foreign policy.” ― Boston Globe “Greenway has taken a second crack at a ‘first draft of history’ and given us a riveting, smart memoir filled with anecdotes and observations that come from years of reflect