Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival [Paperback]

Anderson Cooper (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 8, 2007

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life.

After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother. As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him.

But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family's troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale. Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before -- ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarejevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda -- but he had never seen human misery quite like this. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth.

Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 2005, two tragedies--the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina--turned CNN reporter Anderson Cooper into a media celebrity. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper's memoir of "war, disasters and survival," is a brief but powerful chronicle of Cooper's ascent to stardom and his struggle with his own tragedies and demons. Cooper was 10 years old when his father, Wyatt Cooper, died during heart bypass surgery. He was 20 when his beloved older brother, Carter, committed suicide by jumping off his mother's penthouse balcony (his mother, by the way, being Gloria Vanderbilt). The losses profoundly affected Cooper, who fled home after college to work as a freelance journalist for Channel One, the classroom news service. Covering tragedies in far-flung places like Burma, Vietnam, and Somalia, Cooper quickly learned that "as a journalist, no matter ... how respectful you are, part of your brain remains focused on how to capture the horror you see, how to package it, present it to others." Cooper's description of these horrors, from war-ravaged Baghdad to famine-wracked Niger, is poignant but surprisingly unsentimental. In Niger, Cooper writes, he is chagrined, then resigned, when he catches himself looking for the "worst cases" to commit to film. "They die, I live. It's the way of the world," he writes. In the final section of Dispatches, Cooper describes covering Hurricane Katrina, the story that made him famous. The transcript of his showdown with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (in which Cooper tells Landrieu people in New Orleans are "ashamed of what is happening in this country right now") is worth the price of admission on its own. Cooper's memoir leaves some questions unanswered--there's frustratingly little about his personal life, for example--but remains a vivid, modest self-portrait by a man who is proving himself to be an admirable, courageous leader in a medium that could use more like him. --Erica C. Barnett --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

HarperCollins touts the handsome, prematurely gray host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°as the "prototype for a twenty-first century newsman." Sadly, that statement is all too true. This brief, self-involved narrative reaffirms a troubling cultural shift in news coverage: journalists used to cover the story; now, more than ever, they are the story. Cooper is an intrepid reporter: he's traveled to tsunami-ravaged Asia, famine-plagued Niger, war-torn Somalia and Iraq, and New Orleans post-Katrina. Here, however, the plights of the people and places he visits take a backseat to the fact that Cooper is, well, there. The Yale-educated son of heiress and designer Gloria Vanderbilt weaves personal tragedies (at 10, he lost his father to heart disease and later his older brother to suicide) awkwardly into far graver stories of suffering he's observing. Even when he plies the reader with his own unease ("the more sadness I saw, the more success I had") and obliquely decries TV news's demand for images of extreme misery ("merely sick won't warrant more than a cut-away shot"), he seems to place himself in front of his subjects. Cooper is an intelligent, passionate man and he may be a terrific journalist. But this book leaves one feeling he's little more than a television personality. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (May 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061451517
• ISBN-13: 978-0061136689
• ASIN: 0061136689
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (268 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 202 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brave memoir May 23, 2006

By Nor'easter VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Too often, those we see on television are packaged into a personality that is devoid of inner demons- everything is slick and beautiful. Anderson Cooper lets us inside of the pain in his life and his imperfections and the road he has travelled in dealing with his demons. Of course, we also read about the man we see on television- deeply caring and willing to ask the very hard questions in any situation. I admire Mr. Cooper for his honesty about the inner turmoils of his life and the truly sincere caring he brings to every story he covers. And for those who think he is on an ego trip talking about his wounded youth- wake up! Our pasts are a deeply ingrained part of every one of us and sometimes we do not integrate the pain of a wounded childhood until we are adults and in Anderson's case until he has witnessed the most obscene of suffering on this earth. Kudos- a very well written first book from Mr. Cooper.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Really 360 Degrees But a Sharp and Swift Memoir of a Reporter on the Rise May 24, 2006

By Ed Uyeshima HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Deemed by CNN programming executive Jonathan Klein as the "anchorperson of the future", Anderson Cooper has experienced the type of meteoric rise that is bound to draw critical diatribes as well as hosannas. Based on personal journals he has kept, his newly published book will unlikely shift opinions drastically, but this relatively brief memoir does provide an intriguing, sometimes poignant portrait of a man who let his natural curiosity of the world fester into a career in television journalism. As the son of writer Wyatt Cooper and heiress/blue jean magnate Gloria Vanderbilt, he was a child of privilege. At the same time, he was driven to find his own identity in light of deep personal tragedies, which by far, provide the most absorbing passages in his book.

His father died during open heart surgery at the age of fifty, and a decade later in 1988, his brother Carter jumped off the balcony of their mother's apartment. It was this senseless suicide that pushed Cooper to become a reporter, first with the youth-oriented Channel One and then ABC, traveling with his own video camera to dangerous regions of the world like Myanmar, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. These passages are filled with vivid impressions of poverty, starvation and the personal impact of war. It becomes clear through Cooper's writing that he was seeking an escape from the personal pain he felt from his brother's premature death.

Ironically, the least interesting parts of the book have to do with his move to CNN. In spite of his sharp accounts about the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, especially expressive in his frustration with the minimal government support for the victims, he comes across a bit too pat and expeditious in his coverage of these events and the impact on him personally. Perhaps because so much has been covered by CNN, we take for granted that Cooper will provide more than a general hope for humanity. Regardless, the book provides a glimpse into a television personality who has used his own experiences with tragedy as a supremely empathetic means toward addressing the broader-based tragedies he covers. I look forward to his next set of memoirs.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving and literate June 2, 2006

By bookcrazy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I just finished Dispatches from the Edge, and found myself close to tears as I read the final pages. While ultimately uplifting, Cooper, I think, writes of the search that many of us go through to bring meaning to pain and loss. While searching for some solace, he finds a way to illuminate the tragedies of others. He recognizes, due to his own famous family, that there is a balance that constantly has to be examined between reporting and voyeurism, and seem to work to always keep the scales in order.

For those expecting straight reporting, there will be disappointment, for there is more of a blend of narrative and recollection, and the mix brings an interesting melancholy to scenes already overwhelmingly sad. Cooper's loss, both of his father and his brother, color much of his reporting, and rather than detracting from it, adds a great deal of emotional context.