Customer Reviews

Ambushed: A War Reporter's Life on the Line

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ian Stewarts account of conflict journalism during his time with the UPI and AP is disturbingly honest. Though Stewart confesses to being an adrenaline junkie, his narrative clearly reveals a truly compassionate professional driven to cover conflict in order to reveal atrocities that threaten human rights and more crucially human lives. Unfortunately, Ambushed is also an account of how time and time again the deaths of children, families, and communities in places like Sierra Leon are underexposed. Stewart writes about the frustration of writing countless stories about war torn regions that are never published, because the public is simply not interested. From his description is seems that this injustice lies not in the field of news coverage, but rather on the desks of news editors who choose not to print stories about Africa, the continent relegated to the back pages at best by media corporations. So civil wars, that translate into thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths go unheeded. Stewarts descriptions of the conflicts that he witnessed, predominantly based on stories that hed written for the wire, turn a careful and compassionate eye to the victims (both survivors and casualties). His attention to detail far exceeds event coverage (i.e. date, time, and body count) by attending to humane details and the individual consequences of tragedy for victims of war, whose stories he cared enough to tell. Stewarts own life was dramatically transformed, January 1999, when rebel soldiers in Freetown ambushed his car. His account of recovery, physically and psychologically are incredibly candid, and truly extend the sense of tragedy and courage to the reader. Ian Stewart has a great deal to be proud of in his career as a foreign correspondent, and undoubtedly has many more great talents and works to share with the world. I recommend this book without reservation to anyone with a heart.

This book is a fierce page-turner that rumbles through until the very last page. Ian Stewart gives an honest and sobering account of what it's like to cover war in a region that has forever played second fiddle to the headline news. From where Stewart was filing, all the glory associated with war reportage had dried up and gone. All that remained was barbarism and terror. The book makes a powerful statement about the great myth of war and how it sits with a man --soldier or reporter --once he's on the other side of it.
We're lucky that Stewart made it out alive. This book is a must read for any young journalist, or anyone for that matter who enjoys a powerful story.

I read Freetown Ambush published by Penguin Canada. If this is the American version of the same book, I highly recommend it.
Stewart's description of Ivory Coast and the disintegration of a society is compelling and the descriptions of the inside workings of the AP is very interesting. The touching story of his recovery is short and sweet. His writing style keeps moving and he explains the confusing situation in West Africa very well.

The first impression I had of Ian Stewart, when I met him in VietNam, was that of the prototypical "foreign correspondent" - right out of central casting. Since then he has gained maturity the hard way - but he has gained it. His analysis of the problems and pitfalls of West Africa are right on target - some of which I have learned first hand in my own travels. If you want a taste of West African adventure without risking your life, read this book!

This book would make a great movie! An account of the adrenaline habit of one war correspondent, his fixation with the rush of danger, and the pull of cameraderie under extreme pressure, it's also a look at the intense kind of friendship/rivalry that makes this kind of reporting especially addictive. A great buddy movie, in fact.

It's also a moving account of recovery from a near-fatal injury to the brain -- an exploration of the struggle one man goes through to regain a life after damage to the organ most central to who we are. And it poses an important question:, SHOULD these (usually) young reporters be thrown into sometimes obscure wars to satisfy an ever more hungry public.

Mr. Stewart has survived his ordeal and come out a winner. Others have not been so lucky.

I would heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in a good exciting read, both political and medical, punctuated with some important questions about what we ask of the people who bring us the news.

With the drive and intensity of an experienced war correspondent, Stewart files the most important story of his career: his own. And, as the reader will come to realize, he has to do it with one hand more or less tied behind his back.

He is grim witness to events more terrible and tragic than most people, as he learns, care to encounter outside of fiction. Stewart carries on, nevertheless, with an almost messianic fervor to save the truth in the lives of the world's most destitute people from oblivion. There is a personal price to be paid, he learns, but he won't understand how steep it is until after the book's critical event, when the meaning of life changes completely in an instant.

What follows is the account of a man almost as humbled and trapped as the war victims he once wrote about. His story of that new life is no less dramatic than his telling of the previous one. Bizarre dreams often seem to be the only glue holding the two experiences together for him. Victories are hard fought and sometimes disappointing. But it turns out that he is, more than anything else, a fighter.

Like good fiction, the book, in the end, delivers a story even more compelling than the one it promises at the beginning. One leaves the book looking over Stewart's shoulder as he recognizes a mountain he once thought he knew from the vivid, more enlightened perspective of one who has climbed it.

With the drive and intensity of an experienced war correspondent, Stewart files the most important story of his career: his own. And, as the reader will come to realize, he has to do it with one hand more or less tied behind his back.

He is grim witness to events more terrible and tragic than most people, as he learns, care to encounter outside of fiction. Stewart carries on, nevertheless, with an almost messianic fervor to save the truth in the lives of the world's most destitute people from oblivion. There is a personal price to be paid, he learns, but he won't understand how steep it is until after the book's critical event, when the meaning of life changes completely in an instant.

What follows is the account of a man almost as humbled and trapped as the war victims he once wrote about. His story of that new life is no less dramatic than his telling of the previous one. Bizarre dreams often seem to be the only glue holding the two experiences together for him. Victories are hard fought and sometimes disappointing. But it turns out that he is, more than anything else, a fighter.

Like good fiction, the book, in the end, delivers a story even more compelling than the one it promises at the beginning. One leaves the book looking over Stewart's shoulder as he recognizes a mountain he once thought he knew from the vivid, more enlightened perspective of one who has climbed it.

Genocide is never pretty. Over the past few decades, Africa, unfortunately has been a showcase for it. This is a journalist's shocking first hand account. Worth reading if for no other reason than to be informed of the reality.

In this book you get the information you will not see on any TV station. You recieve first hand the experience of a war reporter. The author is very good about telling you the situation before he travels to his destination. He doesn't hold anything back. He makes the story come alive with his descriptions.
My favorite part of the book was his recovery period. He had to work so hard to find out who he truly was and what he had to overcome was amazing. It opened my eyes to the dangers that reporters face to bring us the news.

When I first picked up Ian Stewart's "Ambushed: A War Reporter's Life on the Line" I had some trepidation. I worried I would finish it with the same feeling I had when I read "All the President's Men." I enjoyed that book, but I had a feeling it was only really compelling to people interested in history, politics or journalism. Not that those topics are boring - they just don't always have much heart or soul.
With Stewart's book, I was pleasantly suprised. Although a good portion of the book focuses on the political climates he faced as a war correspondent, it also gets to the heart of how war affected people in the places he covered. With relative grace, Stewart manages to balance the bare-bones reality of war with the personal struggles he had covering it as the Associated Press' West Africa bureau chief. He brings real emotion to the book by describing both fighting in the streets and the reactions of children who see it every day.
But the real heart of the story is apparent in the final third of the book, after Stewart has been shot in the head by rebels in Sierra Leone. As he describes the rehabilitation process following his injury it becomes more and more evident what war reporters really face. It's really compelling to analyze, along with Stewart, why those journalists do what they do and whether it is worth the sacrifice.
In the simplest terms, the book is interesting because it tells one person's story in a way that most people, not just journalists or history and politics buffs, can relate to. By showing how Stewart covered war and how he dealt with it personally, "Ambushed" opens a window into war that most of us will never get to experience first-hand.