The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life & Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny [Hardcover]

Scott Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 1999

What makes a man a hero, and what price must he pay? For one man, the answers came in the scariest place on earth.

Fred Cuny spent his life in terrible places. In countries rent by war, earthquake, famine, and hurricane, Cuny saved hundreds of thousands of lives with a fearlessness that amazed all who knew him. A Texan, a teller of tall tales, a womanizer, and a renegade, Cuny grew ever more daring in his globe-trotting adventures as his motivations became murkier. Was he a danger junkie? A CIA spy? Or a man who truly believed he had the wits and courage to save the world?

After twenty-five years of heroic work that earned Cuny the nickname "Master of Disaster," he set off to the rogue Russian republic of Chechnya, a land of gangsters and Islamic terrorists, a quasi-state engaged in an unimaginably savage war with a Russian army of drunken, brutal incompetents. Cuny went to try to stop the war, but for the first time in his life he was scared, unsure of himself in an insane landscape where betrayal and murder lurked behind every face. He failed to stop the horror, yet soon returned to Chechnya on a mysterious mission. Cuny was last seen on a lonely mountain road, headed for a rebel fortress that was being subjected to the most intense artillery bombardment since World War II.

War correspondent Scott Anderson became obsessed with Cuny's fate, and ventured into the deadly war zone himself in search of answers to several haunting questions: Whom was Cuny working for? What happened to him, and why? Most powerfully, what sort of man believes he can save the world?

The answers to these questions form the heart of this extraordinary narrative, a true-life thriller that brings to light the chaos, treachery, and danger of the "new world order." The Man Who Tried to Save the World is a tour de force of literary journalism and an utterly compelling read.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fred Cuny, a fearless and hugely ambitious Texan, was nicknamed "Master of Disaster" for his handling of relief projects worldwide. He stood out in a bureaucratic world with his unorthodox methods and obvious success. In 1995, during a visit to a mountain border town in Chechnya that was under heavy Russian bombardment, Fred Cuny disappeared.

Renowned war correspondent Scott Anderson became so involved in uncovering Cuny's fate that he risked his life several times in Chechnya. He describes a larger-than-life character who could have come straight from a Le Carré novel--a flawed hero who habitually lied about his past but to whom hundreds of thousands of disaster victims owed their lives. All wars are cruel, but Anderson succeeds in convincing us that the random savagery shown by the combatants in Chechnya made its terror unique. Against the background of a ruined country, he interviews Chechen rebels and traitors, Russian generals and pathetically young conscripts, and shadowy operatives who steered Cuny toward danger. Lies and changing stories make the mystery of what happened to Cuny ever more impenetrable, yet Anderson continues his stubborn detective work. With writing that has the fluidity and psychological insight shown by the author of the novel Triage, Anderson brings to this book a passion not usually found in journalism and makes it literature. --John Stevenson

From Publishers Weekly

Not even Anderson's intrepid reporting and formidable storytelling skills can bring clarity to the case of Fred Cuny, the legendary relief worker who disappeared in Chechnya in 1995. This is the fault of circumstances rather than of the author, a veteran reporter and novelist (Triage). Known as the Master of Disaster, Cuny was a charismatic Texan who made a career out of bringing relief to civilians displaced by war, winning a reputation for cutting through the bureaucratic tangles of larger relief organizations and governments. Anderson seeks to shed light on two enigmas: the character of Fred Cuny, and the mystery of his disappearance. On the first score, Anderson succumbs to some facile psychologizing; on the second, he does much better, portraying the "snake pit" that was Chechnya, a place where arms smuggling, drug trafficking and graft obscured the lines of battle so completely that it was frequently impossible to determine who was fighting whom at any given moment. Cuny, who had seen his share of battle zones, called it "the scariest place I have ever been." The skill with which Anderson leads readers through a maze of lies and half truths advanced by Russian intelligence, Chechen rebels and others makes readers believe that Chechnya is impenetrable. So, by the book's end, when Anderson advances his own theory about Cuny's disappearance (that he was killed on orders of Chechen president Dzhokar Dudayev, who feared Cuny knew too much about whether or not Dudayev had leftover Soviet nuclear weapons), readers will be hard-pressed to judge whether it's more plausible than any of the conspiracy theories that precede it. And yet, confronted with a Gordian knot of facts and a succession of unreliable sources, Anderson does an admirable job of searching for the truth in a land that truth forgot. Major ad/promo; first serial to Men's Journal; film rights to Monkey Productions (a Disney Company); author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (May 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385486650
• ISBN-13: 978-0385486651
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, thoughtful book about a complex, great man., September 16, 1999

By 

S. Houser "snake77" (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life & Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny (Hardcover)

I first heard Fred Cuny being interviewed on NPR in 1995 about the Chechen war. I was surprised how vivid an impression he made on me based on a short radio interview, his charisma and intelligence came right through. I was very pleased to see Mr. Anderson's book on Cuny's life and tragic disappearance. The book is extremely well researched and written. It paints a picture of man who in a time of manufactured heroes was an authentic, larger than life personality who cared deeply for others and helped save thousands of lives. Mr. Anderson does a fine job of showing us a very complex man who suffered from contradictions, self-doubt and emotional need and who lived his life on an ambitiously epic scale. Besides being an excellent biography, the book also does a fine job of outlining some of the complex forces driving and sustaining the Chechen conflict. Reading the book, you can feel the confusion and frustration experienced by both Fred Cuny and the author as they dig deeper into a brutal, often thoughtless war that Westerners may simply not be equipped to understand. The story of Mr. Anderson's journey to Chechnya to research Cuny's case reads like an espionage thriller. An interesting facet of the book for me were passages near the end when Mr. Anderson would repeat and revise scenarios he had constructed in previous chapters concerning the events surrounding Cuny's last mission. You can almost feel his anger and utter frustration as he attempts to navigate and make sense of the circular and conflicting knot of theories, lies, half-truths, misinformation, omissions, and myths surrounding the events of Cuny's final days. This is a book that succeeds on multiple levels. Highly recommended.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fred Cuny - an American Hero!, June 7, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life & Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny (Hardcover)

When I arrived in Bosnia in December of 1993, I was stunned to find a lumbering Texan wearing an Aggie sweatshirt in the middle of the wartorn hell that was Sarajevo. Fred and I soon discovered we were both from the same university - Texas A&M. More coincidentally, we both served in the same outfit in the Corps of Cadets - Animal-A; he in 1968, and I in 1984. Fred was the most selfless and heroic man I have known. His personal efforts at INTERTEC to restore drinking water to the city of Sarajevo in itself speaks volumes about this big hearted man. The water purification plant was an engineering marvel -- flown into Sarajevo aboard U.S. Air Force C130 aircraft and installed in record time under cover of the tunnel overlooking the Miljaska River in Stari Grad (Old City), Sarajevo. Fred endured sniper bullets and freezing weather to oversee the monumental effort. More importantly, he dove headlong into many other ambitious projects to release the Serb stranglehold on the largely innocents of Sarajevo. Fred was being considered for a high level post in the Department of State when he tragically went missing in Chechnya. I was stunned to come across this book, and am glad there is a written legacy of this larger than life Texan. Fred's son Craig may be justifiably proud of his brave and optimistic father. Next to the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University is a passage from John (15-13) - "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Among all those whose lives Fred touched, there are many friends. Personally, I treasure the photographs of Fred and the insightful memories he left with me. For those who have sought to understand the world's madness and instability, what the military calls Stability and Support Operations, Scott Anderson has hit a home run. An absolutely first class book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heartnbreaking and Fascinating -- but Ellusive, May 25, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of an American Hero (Paperback)

Even though I'd heard of Fred Cuny from a PBS Frontline show about him, I wouldn't have been likely to pick up this biography and account of his dissapearance except that friend had strongly reccomended it. He was a man with a huge compassion toward people in need, and had a comparably huge ego. Anderson makes it clear that Cuny had large dreams, and sometimes altered details about his background and accomplishments to maintain his own mythology. A revolutionary in the field of disaster relief, he was one of the first to recognize the challenges in designing and implementing relief strategies in the post-Cold War era of regional conflicts that would devestate civil societes around the globe. When he dissapeared in Chechnya in 1995 with three colleagues, it eventually triggered a manhunt that escalated to the presidential level between the US and Russia. It's this mystery that drives the book.

Anderson's account begins in standard journalistic fashion, with a "teaser" opening chapter relating the basics of Cuny's mysterious dissapearance. He then goes back to construct a biography of this remarkable man and the disaster relief wolrd he shouldered his way into. There are some interesting episodes along the way, such as Cuny's precience about what would unfold in Somalia, his dominant role in Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq, and his ingenuity in Bosnia--but eveything builds toward Chechnya. Here, Anderson is particularly strong at capturing the horrifying randomness of the war between the Russian army and Chechen sepratists. The vital point about this war, which is made perfectly clear, is that there are a plethora of groups with subtle alliances and unfathomable agendas. There are units of Russian army conscripts (who would rather be anywhere else), elite professional soldier units (who are frightenly autonomous), commando units, Russian intelligence agents (remarkably inept), relief workers, Chechen guerillas, Chechen mafia, regular bandits, politicans in neighboring provinces, refugees, and in the midst of this malestorm of interests strode Fred Cuny.

In detailing this confusion of interests, and the multitude of rumor and disinformation concerning Cuny's dissapearance, Anderson does tend to repeat himself. This gets kind of old, and one wishes for a bit more rigerous editing throughout. His technique of building up various theories only to be able knock them down later also gets somewhat tiresome, but is understandable. In the end, Anderson travels to Chechnya and endangers his life to try and track down the truth and must be commended for that. Unfortunately, as one might expect, many of the people who might have known something of the truth about the matter are killed along way. Anderson's hypothesis that Cuny was dissapeared on the order of Chechan President Dudayev is reasonably convinving, but ultimately ephemeral and unprovable. While Dudayev is obviously unapproachable on matter, one wishes Anderson had spent some time trying to track down Cuny's driver, a man who melted away.