Anderson Cooper’s memoir of covering disasters for CNN is far more substantial than most books of this sort. It’s also exceptionally well written, evoking powerful images of what it must have been like to be hunting news in such places as Somalia during a famine or coastal Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Cooper addresses one of the questions I always ponder—How can a person distance him- or herself from the human emotions endemic to disaster so that s/he can cover the story in a way that is somewhat objective and thus comprehensible to viewers? It seems that this sort of challenge is ideal for a person who, like Cooper, is numbed out from childhood trauma and searching for risky environments that can penetrate the numbness and provide an emotional experience.
Cooper does not offer up a sob story of the poor little rich boy. (His mother is wealthy heiress Gloria Vanderbilt.) Rather, he uses his own life experiences to inform his reporting from hellish war zones and disaster areas. And he does this very successfully, helping the reader to gain an appreciation of what drives him as a newsman, as well as what people who are victimized expect from the media. Quite simply, Cooper says, they want the media to tell their stories: How they came to be orphaned, or wounded, or poverty-stricken so that perhaps someone (who?) might help right a wrong, end a war or maybe just feel some empathy.
Although this book fails to make much of an overall point or statement, it is a fast, interesting read and I recommend it to anyone who follows the news and likes to know some of the back story.
-- Bonnie McEwan