War News

War News - Robert Sam Anson

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Based in Saigon and Phnom Penh in 1969-1970, Anson ( Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard M. Nixon ) covered the war in Southeast Asia as a Time correspondent. Here he writes about the fierce competitiveness among Western journalists (accusing Newsweek 's Arnaud de Borchgrave of feeding him false information), and their readiness to risk their lives for a story. Two of his more swashbuckling colleagues, Sean Flynn of Paris-Match and CBS cameraman Dana Stone, for example, who zoomed into enemy territory on their motorcycles, haven't been seen since. The most dramatic section of this exciting reminiscence tells of Anson's capture by North Vietnamese forces; apparently marked for execution, he was spared when his captors learned he had rescued Vietnamese civilians during a rampage by Cambodian troops. His homecoming was as unconventional as most of his experiences in Southeast Asia related here: he was greeted by a New York Daily News headline that read, "Freed Yank Writer Calls Reds 'Pals.' " Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal One would think that the memoirs of a hip Time magazine reporter as he covered the Vietnam and Cambodian wars in the early 1970s would make more fascinating reading than Anson's pedestrian effort. A dull account of the unfolding disaster unleashed by Nixon and Kissinger in Cambodia, the breakup of his marriage, and his three-week experience as a captive of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front are the high points. Despite complaints about Time 's hawkish editors, this is a disappointment. By contrast, Page's story is the autobiography of a gonzo photojournalist, beginning with his trek across Asia in the early 1960s--sort of down and out in Katmandu and Isfahan. High on drugs and low on cash, he tells an adventurous and self-destructive life story spanning three decades of reporting wars in Indochina in between sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. While Page's story is more engaging and might make a good movie, neither is a worthy companion to Michael Herr's Dispatches ( LJ 11/1/77) or David Halberstam's The Making of a Quagmire ( LJ 4/1/65), both classic first-person accounts of the war. For general audiences. - Carl Trocki, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.