NO ORDINARY ASSIGNMENT

An award-winning war reporter recounts her remarkable career in some of the most dangerous places on the planet.

Ferguson begins in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Her childhood was marked by cold, anxious tension within her family and her country. However, this “stint on high alert” primed her for a career built through grit, moxie, and substantial risk: reporting from the epicenters of some of the most catastrophic conflicts of our time—in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, and more. With vivid details and pointed reflection, her memoir draws readers into the world of war that exists beyond the “bang bang” of most news coverage. Chronicling her journey on bumpy mountain roads and through tense military checkpoints, embedding with soldiers and visiting makeshift field hospitals, Ferguson clearly demonstrates the devastating, oft-overlooked impact of war on civilians from every side. “There are always so many more,” she writes, “who suffer and die due to the unintended consequences of conflict: the collapse of economies and governments, and with these failures, the chances for any decent public health—sanitation, nutrition, or medical care.” She is an expert storyteller, conveying the fear and anxiety of her many harrowing close calls and the heartbreak of so many of her personal interviews. Her story of building a career in war reporting has an equally powerful arc, as she shows how she went from feeling like an impostor, plagued by doubt and shame, to a quietly confident professional. The author also goes beyond any adrenaline-junkie stereotype with frank rumination that grants space to grapple with heart-wrenching emotional confrontations as well as the moral complexities of her own role. While acknowledging the particularities of being a woman in her position, including the prevalence of double standards, she does not allow herself to be reduced to them.

A captivating, honest, and powerful attempt to do justice to the hardest stories to tell.