The Fall of Baghdad, By Jon Lee Anderson, The Penguin Press, 378 pp, $24.95
The run-up to the war with and the invasion of Iraq last year were well chronicled by dozens of reporters who gained "embedded" status with US military units. But as much attention as that experiment garnered for its groundbreaking approach to covering modern warfare, the efforts of courageous reporters who remained in Baghdad were often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work produced by the "embedded" media.
Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was one of those journalists. And his latest book, "The Fall of Baghdad," provides a fascinating look at life in the Iraqi capital as it awaited the devastating firepower of the most powerful military machine on the planet. This book is a highly personal account of the war, and its glimpses at the effect of battle on Iraq's civilian population is a grim, compelling reminder that no war -- no matter how "precise" and "surgical" -- can avoid the suffering and death of innocents caught in the crossfire.
What Anderson's account also provides is a look at the daunting logistical challenges that journalists in Baghdad faced. Not only were their activities curtailed and monitored closely by Iraq's information ministry, but the often-unpredictable complications of reporting from a foreign country became exponentially more dangerous during war. In the following excerpt, Anderson described his view, with other journalists, from a balcony of the Palestine hotel in downtown Baghdad on the opening night of the "shock and awe" bombardment: "There were huge blasts, simultaneous concussions with aftershocks that knocked us back on our feet and made us shout involuntarily with the shock. . . . The bombing extravaganza went on for around 30 minutes; symphonic crescendos of blasts and noise interspersed by moments of quiet until the next explosions began. With every explosion, car alarms were set off and honked briefly in the streets."
Anderson captures in unsettling detail the excruciating decisions that these reporters made. Which hotels were deemed safe? How and when could satellite phones, banned by the Iraqis as war approached, be taken out of hiding and used to contact families and employers back in the West? How did they balance the pursuit of a good story and their personal safety?
Anderson takes the reader on a vivid tour of the ancient, shabby capital in his working travels. The descriptions probably will be a revelation for an American public whose only image of the capital is through CNN footage. But Anderson's street-level prose, as well as his discussion of Iraqi history since the 1920 uprising against the British, is important reading for anyone interested in trying to understand the country.