Means of Escape [Paperback]

Philip Caputo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

In his first work of nonfiction since A Rumor of War, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Philip Caputo eloquently relates his years as a foreign correspondent covering a world at war. Means of Escape sold more than 30,000 HarperCollins (1991) hardcover copies.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is, make no mistake about it, a startlingly honest and brutal book. It deals with the age-old folly of war and its strange companion, the love of war, which is a siren call to newsmen like Caputo who must report on war. Even after he was wounded in the senseless fighting in Beirut, even after he had escaped death in the fall of Saigon, even after he had gained a meaure of fame and fortune with his bestselling A Rumor of War ( LJ 5/15/77), Caputo found himself drawn again to the terrors of war in Afghanistan, where tribesmen fought Russian high-tech gunships with Victorian-era Enfield rifles. At one point he concludes: "The last good war had been the one between Michael and Lucifer, and that only because angels and devils do not bleed." The writing is suberb. Highly recommended for all.
- Chet Hagan, Berks Cty. P.L. System, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An intensely personal, albeit consistently affecting and frequently riveting memoir of years of living dangerously. Caputo (A Rumor of War, Indian Country, etc.) has witnessed much of the worst violence that marked the latter half of the 20th century. A combat veteran of Vietnam, he went on to cover trouble spots throughout the Third World as a roving correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. Describing himself as drawn to history (if not to the sound of the guns), the globe-trotting author has reported on insurgency in Eritrea, civil strife in Lebanon, Israel's October War, the fall of Saigon, and a host of lesser belligerencies. Looking for a ``good war'' several years after having quit the journalism trade, Caputo accepted an assignment from Esquire that took him deep behind Soviet lines in Afghanistan. Venturesome to the point of rashness, he has paid the price of boldness on many occasions. Though he made it through Vietnam without a physical scratch, for example, the author was imprisoned by Palestinian guerrillas in Beirut and later sustained severe wounds (at the hands of Christian militia) in the same city, leaving him with a still-painful limp. Peacefully settled in one place now, he's content to let a workroom window overlooking a salt marsh on the Long Island Sound serve as his new means of escape. Caputo nonetheless looks back on his days as a rolling stone with some relish and few apparent regrets. Indeed, he retains a rueful sense of barracks humor neatly summarized in an ultrarude anecdote whose moral is: ``the final indignity is that there is no final indignity.'' An episodic, impressionistic, and dead-honest narrative that affords memorable as well as consequential insights into a chaotic era's noteworthy conflicts. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Perennial; First Edition edition (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060984023
• ISBN-13: 978-0060984021
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,030,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist and journalist Philip Caputo (1941 -- ) was born in Chicago and educated at Purdue and Loyola Universities. After graduating in 1964, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years, including a 16-month tour of duty in Vietnam. He has written 14 books, including two memoirs, four books of general nonfiction, and eight novels. His acclaimed memoir of Vietnam, A Rumor of War, has been published in 15 languages, has sold over 1.5 million copies since its publication in 1977, and is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war. His 2005 novel "Acts of Faith," a story about war, love, and the betrayal of ideals set in war-torn Sudan is considered his masterpiece in fiction, and has sold 102,000 copies to date, His most recent novel, Crossers, set against a backdrop of drug and illegal-immigrant smuggling on the Mexican border,was published in hardcover in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf and in paperback by Vintage in 2010. He is now working on a travel book, "The Longest Road: From the Southern Cross to the Northern Lights." It describes an epic road trip from the southernmost point in the U.S., Key West, Floirida, to the northernmost that can be reached by road, Deadhorse Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean. The journey took 4 months and covered 17,000 miles. Though it bears his unique stamp, the narrative fuses elements of John Steinbeck, Jack Keruoac, William Least Moon, and Charles Kuralt. Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are like in the 21st century. He expects to finish in June of the year. Henry Holt will publish the book in May, 2013.

In addition to books, Caputo has published dozens of major magazine articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces in publications ranging from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post to Esquire, National Geographic, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Topics included profiles of novelist William Styron and actor Robert Redford, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the turmoil on the Mexican border.

Caputo's professional writing career began in 1968, when he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, serving as a general assignment and team investigative reporter until 1972. For the next five years, he was a foreign correspondent for that newspaper, stationed in Rome, Beirut, Saigon, and Moscow. In 1977, he left the paper to devote himself to writing books and magazine articles.


Caputo has won 10 journalistic and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 (shared for team investigative reporting on vote fraud in Chicago), the Overseas Press Club Award in 1973, the Sidney Hillman Foundation award in 1977 (for A Rumor of War), the Connecticut Book Award in 2006, and the Literary Lights Award in 2007. His first novel, Horn of Africa, was a National Book Award finalist in 1980, and his 2007 essay on illegal immigration won the Blackford Prize for nonfiction from the University of Virginia.

He and his wife, Leslie Ware, an editor for Consumer Reports magazine, divide their time between Connecticut and Arizona. Caputo has two sons from a previous marriage, Geoffrey, a jazz composer and music teacher, and Marc, a political reporter for the Miami Herald.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Imagined Memoir, as if all memoirs aren't imagined, June 30, 2006

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Means of Escape (Paperback)

Philip Caputo is probably one of our nation's best writers to emerge from the Viet Nam War, up with Tim O'Brien and James Webb. Caputo's reputation rests on his memoir A Rumor of War, and several novels he's written since, all of which deal with people whose lives are impacted, in some way, by military service. This book is a series of vignettes, a sort of fragmented memoir, of the author's experiences throughout his life. The one area where he doesn't spend much time is Viet Nam, having covered that pretty thoroughly in A Rumor of War.

The author grew up in a working-class suburb of Chicago, the child of Italians who weren't far from the old country (they or their parents had immigrated) and he apparently suffered from a wanderlust for much of his early life. He imagined seeing an individual, a sort of magic character who appeared to him in various disguises (a recruiter for the Marine Corps, a hobo on a passing train, an editor offering him an oversees assignment) but his real name was Oneway Ticket, and old Oneway regularly convinces our hero to hop a plane, bus, train, or other conveyance and go off and see the world. By the time he gets shot in Lebanon (after having already been kidnapped, on a separate occasion) you begin to wonder about the author's sanity. When he follows up the Lebanon fiasco by limping into Afghanistan on a leg still pained from the Lebanese shooting, I was certain he was nuts.

Regardless of his sanity, though, Caputo's strength is that he can write. This book is divided up into a series of these accounts of his adventures in exotic corners of the world, separated by short fictional pieces the author has written, apparently for this book. The result is the author's depiction of war as a complex, random, vicious catastrophe that ought to be avoided at all or most hazards. While he doesn't outright condemn war or the impulses that drive men to it, he does come close, and he is very eloquent in describing the human cost of war. He's also very eloquent generally. From his comparison of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Ventura Freeway at rush hour to his description of terrorist interrogation techniques as "Applied Kafka", the author's a wonderful prose stylist, and you wind up enjoying every page, the narrative moving along quickly and the characters standing out, interesting, weird, or bright.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it to anyone interested in modern conflict and journalism. While the book is a bit dated (the forward is dated 1989-90) the subject matter is relevant anyway, and the writing is wonderful.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He tells it like it is, February 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Means of Escape (Paperback)

I picked this book up, after someone suggested it to me. I couldn't put it down. It is a very honest account of what war correspondents went through. Mr Caputo seems to have led a rather interesting life. All I can say is that I am glad I have never been to war, and hopefully never will. It gives an interesting perspective into what human nature can be. I urge you to read this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phil Caputo's Wars, June 14, 2010

By 

Timothy J. Bazzett "ReedCityBoy" (Reed City, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Means of Escape: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Life and Death in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Vietnam (Paperback)

This is one hell of a good book. It's hard to believe it's been around for nearly 20 years now. I got the latest edition with a new author's note from 2008, although it wouldn't have been necessary. The book holds up well, and I especially enjoyed reading of details from the author's childhood and youth in the Chicago suburbs, his early fascination with trains and space travel ("Escape Velocity"), amplified further later in the book when he travels as an adult to the villages in Italy where his grandparents came from in a section called "The Old Country."

In his long career as a journalist and writer, Caputo has traveled to dozens of countries and war zones, often putting his life on the line, treading a fine line between bravery and foolishness, always searching for the "escape" from the humdrum kind of lives so many men are tied into. And yet he is not afraid to admit how frightened he often was, giving his accounts the ring of utter authenticity. Nearly 30 years ago I read his bestselling Vietnam memoir (althought I must admit I don't remember much of it anymore, so will have to read it again now). It's probably not surprising then, that perhaps one of the best sections in this book deals with his memories of his return to that country to cover the fall of Saigon, that ignominious end of the American misadventure there. I had to laugh at the following passage describing his final exit -

"I will not panic, I said to myself. I will behave with courage and dignity. If any women and children must board before me I will let them. I will be brave and honorable ... Most of the women could not run very fast because they were carrying bags filled with gold ingots, and, forgetting my instructions to myself, I nearly trampled them as I made for the chopper ..."

The section on his coverage of the early years of the Soviet-Afghan war was equally fascinating, detailing the hardships endured when he was nearly forty and operating on a gimpy leg resulting from being shot during the Lebanese "fighting." As he described the mujahidin leaders telling him they needed "stingahs" - Stinger missiles - from the Americans to deal with the Soviet gunships, I was reminded of the book and film, "Charlie Wilson's War." Thinking of that, it occurred to me that this particular book might have easily been titled, "Phil Caputo's Wars."

Obviously I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what to say here, so I'll just repeat what I said earlier. This is one hell of a good book. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA