LIVE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD

A world-class newsman's absorbing, anecdotal account of his experiences as a high-profile foreign correspondent. While Arnett has covered events in a host of remote venues, here he focuses on his lengthy stint with the AP in Southeast Asia's combat zones, as well as on a briefer but vastly more visible sojourn as CNN's man in Baghdad at the height of Desert Storm. The New Zealand-born author, 59, was first assigned to Vietnam in mid-1962. Although his front-line reportage on America's involvement there often infuriated the US military and their Washington masters, he earned himself a Pulitzer—and the respect of his professional peers (Malcolm Browne, Horst Faas, David Halberstam, et al.). Posted to the AP's Manhattan headquarters in 1970, Arnett returned to Vietnam frequently, filing dispatches with a variety of datelines—Hanoi, Hue, and even Saigon weeks after its fall to the Communists. Casting his lot in 1981 with the fledgling CNN, Arnett learned the TV trade on the job, in such hot spots as Afghanistan, Beirut, El Salvador, Moscow, and Panama. Heading once again toward the sound of the guns, the author (who became an American citizen following his tour in the Soviet Union) slipped into Iraq days before the US-led coalition unleashed a savage aerial assault on its capital city. Although his under-fire broadcasts from the al-Rashid Hotel, a lengthy interview with Saddam Hussein, and follow-up reports on civilian casualties gained him further enemies in official circles, Arnett's on-air exposure made him a star with the viewing public. Here, in offering his side of this story (and others), he provides compelling reminders that journalism is indeed a calling that—for all its sins of omission and commission—does free people a service whose value is often beyond reckoning. An engrossing memoir—complete with perceptive commentary on colleagues and contemporary notables—from one of the fourth estate's authentic paradigms. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs— not seen)