Customer Reviews

In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
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This is a great book, and an excellent companion to my friend Robert Young Pelton's Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition (Robert Young Pelton the World's Most Dangerous Places).

I have copious notes that I provide below, but up front want to mention that the books comes with a DVD that is SENSATIONAL. The author is not just a gifted writer and observer of the human condition, but also a gifted photographer and cinematographer and his work is shown off to great advantage by Peripetela Pictures in "A World of Conflict: a play." In 24 chapters, one gets a mix of superb video on each of about 20 "hot zones" and also two "mellow" zones: Kurdistan at peace, and Iran with a huge middle class that disagrees with its government's radical posture. The video helps make clear the author's point that broadcast television is not doing the greatest job in showing complex situations. The film ends with a dedication to the tens of millions of innocent victims.

This book, which is vastly more detailed than the video, but best enjoyed AFTER watching the video, is completely different from Pelton's encyclopedic work, and ends with a tour of "Third WOrld America."

I warmed to the author and his work very quickly as I read his superb and consistently ethical discussion and illustration of complex ethical challenges that we all too often avoid through self-censorship, not trusting the US public to "get it." The author is clearly committed to telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I for one consider him vastly more honorable and trustworthy than anyone now running for President, other than Ron Paul, the only common sense person in the lot.

He became a celebrity by accident, with a clip of a cold-blooded killing by a Marine of a wounded man who has surrendered to other Marines, but like Steve Emerson, whose famous 1994 PBS video exposed the immams on US soil calling for the murder of Americans--a film that got him exiled from broadcast journalism and ignored by the FBI--this author ended up finding himself within a Yahoo Internet opportunity.

The bottom line on this book is that there are grave (no pun intended) consequences of ignoring any and all failed states.

A couple of notes:

US and Belgium set stage for the Congo genocide of millions by putting a mad dictator in charge;

Darfur is technically not a genocide because there are a multiplicity of actors killing indiscriminantly;

In tribal conflicts, having a bodyguard and translator team of one from each clan disarms the varied roadblocks by alternating clans (US Government does not appear ready to fund this option yet, they tend to go with the best English speaker, teachers with no warlord stature).

Economics of scarcity, not race or tribes, are at the root of conflict. I will take this opportunity to note that corruption and predatory immoral capitalism, as well as unilateral US militarism and virtual colonialism, are an absolute foundation for our loss of peace and prosperity that is eminently achievable for ALL seven billion souls.

I have a number of short "impressions" that stay with me:
+ Cambodian skulls, tens of thousands of them
+ Tsunami bodies with flesh falling off bones
+ Hatred of America everywhere
+ Poverty, POVERTY, PoVeRtY, poverty, ytrevop (#1 high-level threat)
+ Poverty porn (over the top worst-case pandering coverage)
+ Al Qaeda is FOREIGN to virtually all Muslim tribes and NOT supported
+ Rape worse than death across Africa
+ "There is laughter too" (author is consistently blown away by resilience of people under the most terrible of conditions)
+ Corruption and epidemics on top of poverty are the scourge
+ Night commutes to cities for safety
+ Arab versus African
+ Amount of work it takes to grind corn
+ Jungle rash and respiratory failures as cost of doing this
+ Kevlar DOES get penetrated
+ Hezbollah media relations better than US or Israeli capabilities
+ Amazing stories of grace and perseverence, "indominatable spirits"
+ 5 hours sleep day after day to both do the coverage and convert it into multi-media stories and upload it via satellite to remote stations
+ How obvious it is to the world that US labels anyone who is anti-Israel as a terrorist, and is so quick to support dictators
+ Ugliness of Israeli air strikes on Lebanese roads and bridges
+ Russian carpet bombing of Chechnya, carrying 70 liters a day of water to top story of a shot up apartment building
+ US is blamed for every Israeli atrocity
+ Israeli strategy in Lebanon is failing--Hezbollah grows stronger and more legitimate every day
+ Indiscriminate Israeli war crimes, including helicopter attack on a man on a motorbike who just got food for his family
+ Depth of public anger at US and Israel
+ Results of 18M whatevers of herbicide on Viet-Nam, generations of deformed children growing into deformed adults--girl brushing her hair using her foot to hold the brush as she had no arms....
+ US victims get compenstated, foreign victims do not
+ Colombian mines
+ US supported genocide of millions in Cambodia--mass graves, 17,000 at a time here and there

This is an important and thoughtful book. It should be used as an essential academic, business, government, and religious reference, along with other books I recommend below and of course Pelton's work and the work of Ralph Peters.

The author is elegantly angry at the simplistic almost moronic television commentators and the venal politicians. On page 285 he really gets my attention when he says that he has "a growing self-righteous contempt for the almost wilful ignorance that American citizens have about the rest of the planet." He concludes that we are NOT the good guys, that we have LOST OUR HUMANITY. I agree.

He observes that rendition and torture and summary executions are the tactical manifestation of a strategic vacuum. The US is a rogue nation. I agree.

This is one of the best personal histories I have ever had in my hands, and I consider this author to be one of the most talented, ethical, sincere, intelligent, and patriotic individuals I have ever known of or read work by. The combination of the book and DVD is a good one and should be repeated. I will follow his work in the future, and hope that one day we have a Secretary of State smart enough to bring honest observers of the human condition into their office every single day of the year.

One man, one year, twenty wars. Wow. Simply a moving wonderful piece of work that puts the poverty, grief, and dishonor in stark perspective, not as a "downer" but rather as a call to responsibility by We the People.

See also:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

I was immediately sucked into "In the Hot Zone" when Sites recounts his personal drama after reporting on the 2004 Iraq mosque shooting, which ultimately sent him hurtling away from mainstream network news to his Yahoo! project.

And then Sites begins his journey, and although we get personal anecdotes along the way, he focuses mainly on his subject: each and every war zone on the planet, its victims and its perpetrators.

I began to really ask myself whether I liked this approach or not. I was thinking, there are two ways to go with this kind of travelogue material: the bestselling, highly personal, "Eat, Pray Love" approach by Elizabeth Gilbert. Or the more dispassionate "The Places In Between" treatment by Rory Stewart.

Ultimately, Kevin adopted neither, as he tried to grasp the magnitude of all the material he had produced in a year's worth of war zones. And what emerges, so profoundly, is his own style. Short chapters, scenes from a tragedy, punctuated with occasional stories of courage, hope and humanity.

What comes across clearly is a journalist's isolation, frustration, honesty and devotion to his craft -- almost like a monk pushing himself beyond his breaking point in the name of some indescribable mission. As you get deeper into the book, Sites' writing becomes more philosophical, often poetic. And at some point, you have to throw up your hands and ask yourself: how? How do we do this to each other? How does one man do this to himself?

I would have liked to have heard more personal anecdotes from the author about the challenge of the task he had assumed, and how he felt after he returned to Iraq for the first time after the mosque shooting incident. Also, I would have happily endured a book twice as long just to linger a little while longer in a few locations that we never hear about otherwise.

Still, this is required reading for anyone who takes journalism seriously. And the bonus DVD is a great addition, but almost not necessary, given how vividly Sites expresses himself in writing.

Sites' book is just fantastic. He chronicles his experience as an online journalist, giving background information that goes beyond the stories and features on his website.

The most striking thing about the book is its structure: Each chapter is divided up into smaller sections, each quickly digestible and ideal for stopping. This book is great for reading on the bus or at work (you know who you are!)

Sites makes a real effort not to give us "misery porn," and this book self-consciously details this effort. Sites obviously gets emotionally bogged down by the constant scenes of depression and poverty; going back to the structure of the book, each story, or anecdote, can strike you in a different way. While he writes about an amputee's miserable life in one snippet, another snippet describes the joy that same amputee experiences while singing. I think Sites really tries to balance every tear with a smile.

This book also deals -- both implicitly and explicitly -- with issues in journalism and media/communications: ethics, professionalism, the role of media, new teachnologies, etc.

An all-around good read, I don't rate many books this highly.

Kevin Sites has done a wonderful job bringing the reader along with him during his travels to war zones and hot spots around the world. One cannot help but feel for those he comes into contact with. It seems my and Kevin's politics are polar opposites but that has no bearing on how I feel about him, his reporting, or the subject he is covering. he is documenting the human condition around the world. All politics and personal bias should be transcended by the gravity of the situations and the true hope and care Kevin shows towards the subjects and the honesty in which he strives to deliver the story to the reader. The only reason I gave this four instead of five stars is because I would have preferred to have a little more reflection on the entire project and his personal experiences at the end of the book. Personal gripe. Great book, great bonus DVD also.

I am a Marine Corps and Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran and I gotta say Kevin Site's experiences dictated in his book "In The Hot Zone" was truly a great read. During my time overseas and in the military I can admit I was a bit brainwashed and deemed everyone who wasn't friendly to the Marines in the press as enemy sympathizers. Now that I have been out nearly 6 years I can see it from a less bias perspective. I remember when the video was recorded of the Marine's execution of an unarmed insurgent in Fallujah. Though I don't remember what ever came of it, probably because I was more worried about keeping my head down and staying alive. It was disturbing to read that General Richard Natonski, a general I recall meeting and served under, took no action against the Marine who was caught clearly on tape executing an unarmed and injured opponent. It was embarrassing to me, my Corps, and my country. One should not let their own patriotism blind them to what's right and what's wrong. I thank Kevin for showing me that through his book. Simply a great read!

This is an outstanding work by Kevin Sites. In writing this book he traveled to all of the major countries currently in conflict and reported on the impact of that conflict on the people of that country. Often he put himself in considerable danger to report the stories and were it not for his eye witness reporting, much of the suffering in these countries would go unnoticed by the rest of the world, His book is made even more real because of the DVD which accompanies it. This is certainly recommended reading for anyone wishing to understand the real story and not just what the normal news media want you to know.

This is an excellent book that deserves to be read by a very wide audience. Sites was a freelance war correspondent for NBC News in Iraq when his controversial story concerning a marine shooting in a mosque led him to leave network reporting and take on a much riskier assignment. Working as a internet reporter for Yahoo!, Sites established for himself the ambitious plan to cover every armed conflict in the world in one year. My immediate reaction to this idea was, I admit, quite negative. I could not see how he could possibly do justice to any of the stories and the idea, seemed a case of the most blatant sensationalism and ambulance chasing. Having read the book now cover to cover, I am pleased to be able to say that my reaction was entirely mistaken.
Sites begins by admitting that in such a short time, he cannot provide the details and background to every conflict that one might wish for in a longer work. Instead, his goal was to offer small personal details and "character driven narratives" that might in some way make the conflict meaningful to his audience. I am not familiar with how the internet site worked, but if his book is an accurate reflection of it, I would guess that he was extremely successful. His stories are about "ordinary" or "extraordinary" people, their struggles, and how the conflict affected them on a daily basis. He tells of their lives in a way that makes us care about them and explains in culturally sensitive ways what they think about us as Americans, and why they may or may not care about us. Moreover, while his focus is on conflict zones, he is conscious of the danger that his reporting "will become this deluge of tragedy" or what others refer to as "poverty porn." Therefore he deliberately reminds us that his subjects also have moments of happiness, laughter, and love and that "people are more than just the sum of their misery."
While Sites' chapters on such places as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Israel, and Colombia are among my favorites, Sites is at his best not when he is speaking of people and places but of himself and his role as a journalist. His work has made him deeply aware of the ethical dilemmas and standards confronting all citizens of this world, but in particular those who work in the journalistic profession. He admits that he has not always met those standards to his own satisfaction, though I suspect that he is no worse and rather better than many of his peers. Nonetheless, it is precisely his willingness to discuss those dilemmas through his own examples so openly that makes his book so intriguing and so valuable. In fact, I would consider this book a "must read" for any students considering a career in international journalism, but it is equally useful to all those with an interest in the world outside their immediate borders.

Sites is right that Americans don't know much about the world they live in. He takes us to third world nations where conflicts rage and people die of war and hunger. This is a dangerous world and Sites makes us aware of this. I think Sites is a talented journalist, who takes his work very seriously. I enjoyed the writings, and I remember well his report for NBC about the slayings in the mosque. However, you can't have it both ways. Later when a Iraqi man if shot in the head and dying, Sites poses with his camera as a Marine comes forward. When the Marine asks him if he is going to film him while he puts this fatally wounded man out of his misery, Sites says of course. What happens is the man endures an agonizing death from a fatal head shot, and people let him suffer.

I enjoyed this book. I think Kevin is a little self righteous. However his points about the US relates to the rest of the world are very true. A good read.

The short attention span and corporate management of mainstream media has pushed serious investigative journalists to the fringes, with good ones like Kevin Sites forced to work independently or in unsustainable online operations. The subject of this book is Sites' year-long project for Yahoo! News in which he visited 20 war zones in a single year. The project led to some unexpected results. With so much traveling Sites did not have the time to report from each combat zone with a great amount of in-depth investigation, but on the other hand the project is a sobering illustration of how much senseless violence is taking place in the world at any given time. The rapid schedule also led Sites to dispense with standard action news coverage and to concentrate on the innocent civilians and overworked soldiers who have to take the brunt of bad decisions by politicians and demagogues. In the process, Sites comes up with incredible insights on war and politics that are as compelling as they are low-key, and his skills as an investigative journalist are complemented by a writer's gift for reaching powerful insights in few words.

America is full of pundits who think they can make big statements about wars and humanitarian crises that they have not seen in person and about which they've only heard propaganda. Kevin Sites and other courageous old-school journalists like him have really been on the front lines. Too bad the mass media is too yellow to give them the airtime that they, and their subjects, deserve. [~doomsdayer520~]

The title of the book refers to Kevin Sites's project as a news correspondent for Yahoo!News to visit and report from all of the "hot zones" or places of armed conflict within the world in a one-year span. The bulk of the book consists of short chapters on each of twenty such hot zones. A second story concerns Sites's being at the wrong place at the right time and videotaping a Marine executing an unarmed and wounded Iraqi insurgent in a mosque near Falluja in November 2004, as well as the aftermath and public controversy, the ultimate questionable decision of U.S. military top brass not to charge any one, and the author's own wrestling with ethical issues (both journalistic and personal) raised by the incident.

THE HOT ZONE is not a perfect book (primarily because it is too breezily written), but it surfaces enough issues of serious public import that it warrants five stars and wide readership within the United States. Probably the best way to give a feel for some of those issues is to quote Sites:

"As the world's last remaining superpower, the American public's ambivalence about world affairs is not just regrettable but irritating and unacceptable." This is Sites's obsession. More: "We have unparalleled access to information, yet on the most important matters of our responsibility as global citizens, we live in information poverty. America is a third-world nation in its per capita knowledge of the people, issues and events outside its borders." The chief value of THE HOT ZONE is as one small corrective to that appalling ignorance and indifference.

With regard to the American soldiers carrying out our government's policy and fighting in Iraq (as with the earlier generation of American soldiers in Vietnam): "[D]o we want to just say thank you * * * -- or do we need to try to understand that asking them to kill for us may also kill something inside of them?"

"There are few good guys in this war [the current one in Iraq] -- or in the majority I have seen." In other words, in twenty hot zones Sites encountered few noble, morally pure warriors.

"War poses as combat but is really collateral damage. * * * [S]ocieties are encouraged by their leaders to romanticize warriors and their weapons * * * while avoiding thoughts of the legacy of civil destruction they also bring." It is that collateral damage, the civil destruction Sites found in every one of his hot zones, that is the ultimate (and for me, most memorable, even haunting) subject of his journalism.

Further on the credit side, I should mention and applaud a useful appendix that summarizes each of the "hot zones" -- including numbers dead and displaced, a timeline, and a paragraph on the current "conflict status" -- as well as a DVD ("A World of Conflict") that comes with the book.

Now for a couple complaints:

The narrative is sub-divided into brief, separately titled segments, many of which are only one to four paragraphs long and few of which extend more than two pages. For example, a six-page chapter on Lebanon consists of the following nine segments: My Afternoon with Hezbollah, Political Power, "Are You Just a Blog?", The Interview, Litany of Terror, Liberators?, Theocracy, Key Player, and One-Dimensional. To me, this presentation is annoying and overly derivative of the broadcast media, which has developed very constricting limitations that often seem to permit only one point per report, or one point per minute. A book is a different medium. If written with sufficient care and attention, it does not need to be so chopped up. Indeed, it suffers from the treatment; some of its potential power and depth are sacrificed.

Second, at the bottom of the front cover there is the legend, "A portion of the author's royalties will be donated to charity." I see similar proclamations of generosity with increasing frequency. They too annoy me. Are we soon going to see plumbers advertise "I tithe to my church" or lawyers state "A portion of my fees will be donated to the Sierra Club"? Actually, the plumber's tithe at least implies 10%, while the nebulous "portion" that Sites and my hypothetical lawyer promise is almost meaningless (it could be as low as 1%, after all). Before this sort of gimmick is given any credence, the benefactor should at least commit himself to a specific percentage. Even then, and maybe I am hopelessly old-fasioned, I believe it unseemly to tout one's charity like this; it looks and smells too much like marketing. (It is different with concert performers or authors who dedicate all of their fees or royalties to a specific charity or cause. That clearly is fund-raising, not marketing.)