Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels [Hardcover]

Anne Garrels (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2003

As National Public Radio's senior foreign correspondent, Anne Garrels has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. She is renowned for direct, down-to-earth, insightful reportage, and for her independent take on what she sees. One of only sixteen un-embedded American journalists who stayed in Baghdad's now-legendary Palestine Hotel throughout the American invasion of Iraq, she was at the very center of the storm. Naked in Baghdad gives us the sights, sounds, and smells of our latest war with unparalleled vividness and immediacy.

Garrels's narrative starts with several trips she made to Baghdad before the war, beginning in October 2002. At its heart is her evolving relationship with her Iraqi driver/minder, Amer, who becomes her friend and confidant, often serving as her eyes and ears among the populace and taking her where no other reporter was able to penetrate. Amer's own strong reactions and personal dilemma provide a trenchant counterpoint to daily events. The story is also punctuated by e-mail bulletins sent by Garrels's husband, Vint Lawrence, to their friends around the world, giving a private view of the rough-and-tumble, often dangerous life of a foreign correspondent, along with some much-needed comic relief.

The result is enthralling, deeply personal, utterly authentic--an on-the-ground picture of the war in Iraq that no one else could have written. As Chicago Sun-Times critic Lloyd Sachs wrote about Garrels's work in Baghdad, "a few choice words, honestly delivered, are worth more than a thousand pictures . . . In your mind's eye, they carry lasting truth."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It is hard not to admire Garrels. Enduring everything from bombing raids and artillery barrages to bad food, corrupt officials and aggressive border guards, this veteran war correspondent continued to report for NPR from her perch at the Palestine Hotel throughout the coalition drive toward Baghdad. After all the major television networks pulled out their staffs, Garrels stayed in the middle of it, painting with words the only picture available to most Americans of what was going on in the center of Iraqi power and in the hearts and minds of the frightened and confused residents. Though she writes in the same clear, straightforward prose familiar to radio listeners, the powerful stuff of her live broadcasts translates poorly to the written page in this day-by-day account of her experience. She admits her limited purview, restricted in what she could see by the Iraqi Information Ministry and later by the hazards of the battlefield, and with the manuscript completed only months after her return, the reader is left feeling that reflection is not Garrels's strong suit. There are some nice details, like an Information Ministry staffer asking Garrels for batteries for his shortwave radio so he can "find out what's really going on." But her off-the-cuff impressions of the response of ordinary Iraqis to the war, which rang so true at the time, come off now as obvious and overly simple. This account works well as a personal narrative of courage under fire, suffering and survival, but unfortunately, it lacks in insightful commentary and summing up of events.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

NPR correspondent Garrels, on assignment in Iraq from October 2002, before the war, until April 2003, after the war, offers an inside look at the conflict. She intersperses her reports and reflections with e-mails her husband sent to friends and family, which provide secondary color on the life of a news correspondent. New to Iraq, Garrels focuses on the perils of a new assignment, gathering reliable sources, shepherding all the technology needed for modern radio reporting, and coping with "minders," who^B monitor interviews with Iraqis. She is frank about her uncertainty of how "to tackle this complicated story in a country I don't know." This book is a fascinating look at how she manages, as one of only 16 unembedded reporters in Iraq, with the help of her driver-minder, who becomes a confidant, to cover the build-up to the war and the war itself. Readers looking for details and background on the war will appreciate Garrels' account. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (September 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374529035
• ISBN-13: 978-0374529031
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent account of war-reporting's vagaries, September 6, 2003

By 

Ron Franscell, Author of 'Sourtoe Cocktail Club' - See all my reviews

This review is from: Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels (Hardcover)

In some ways, Anne Garrels had a extraordinary advantage over print and television reporters who covered the Iraq war last spring.

She had no cameras, no tell-tale articles that could be hunted on the Internet by suspicious secret police, no bulky notebooks to mark her as a reporter in a crowd. Only a tape recorder the size of a cigarette pack ... and the sounds of war. She traveled lightly and discreetly, just under the radar of the gatekeepers.

Now, "Naked in Baghdad" chronicles Garrels's Iraq assignments between October 2002 and she left after the war in April 2003 -- from under-the-table visa negotiations, to swimming in a stagnating hotel pool to work off stress, to explaining the haunted life of normal Iraqis to normal Americans nine hours behind her.

"Naked" is intimate, authentic and blunt, without much literary decoration. It's a simple account that offers a real glimpse inside a foreign reporter's life -- and of the grander canvas upon which world events are being painted.

Unlike many of the wet-eared young correspondents dispatched to Iraq, Garrels is a hardened veteran, earning her stripes covering conflicts in the West Bank, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Time zones, border crossings, badge-heavy bureaucrats, language barriers, blood and death are her office furniture.

Garrels's account is scrupulously impartial. She openly discusses her skepticism about a war based on suspicions about weapons of mass destruction, but bluntly explains Saddam's intolerable degradations. Garrels is, as one might hope, ultimately fair and balanced. Her goal is to capture the nuances and the ripple-effects of war among people who are directly splashed by it -- and such people rarely dictate the spin of news.

"Naked in Baghdad" certainly adds the most intimate war-reporting in a conflict that changed many of the rules for journalists.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful Memoir, October 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels (Hardcover)

Anyone who listened to NPR during the 2003 Gulf War probably heard many of Anne Garrels' reports from Baghdad. She could be heard two or three times a day reporting on events before, during, and after the bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of the city. Garrels reported primarily from the Palestine Hotel, calling in on an illegal satellite phone that she managed to keep hidden from the constant Iraqi security sweeps.

The book is a fascinating account of Garrels' time in Baghdad, told through her own journal entries and email updates sent to friends by her husband. It is more about the experiences of a veteran war correspondent than the war itself. As one of only a few American reporters who decided to remain in Baghdad when the bombing campaign began, Garrels displayed remarkable bravery and ingenuity in continuing to file her reports to NPR from a city under seige.

I often found myself listening to her reports during the war and wondering what in the world it must be like to be hiding in a hotel room while broadcasting halfway around the world to NPR - and hoping you don't get caught (or killed) while doing so. After reading Naked in Baghdad, it sounds like that wasn't even the most difficult part of her job. The risks she took in going out into the streets to collect the information in order to have something to report every day sounds comparably more difficult.

It sounds like Garrells has many more stories to tell from other wars zones (Afghanistan, Chechnya, Pakistan, etc). I look forward to reading more from this reporter.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is no damsel in distress, November 29, 2004

By 

D. Sean West (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels (Hardcover)

In this day and age it is hard not to become obsessed with following the news but it is easy to forget that what you read in the newspaper is only half the story. NPR reporter Anne Garrels tells the account of what goes on behind the news as she reports from Baghdad leading up to and during the war.

I was also happy to find that Garrels steers clear of the usual journalistic self aggrandizement in writing this incredible compelling book. Weaving together her own daily life in Iraq, the pressures of dealing with the madness of Saddam's bureaucracy and her encounters with regular people, she opens up a whole different world to her readers. This has the effect of humanizing the Iraquies, showing them as neither enemy nor victim as they are so often portrayed to suit the purposes of others but rather showing them as they are. It is also refreshing to read how Garrels also breaks down the traditional barrier between the reporter and the public-showing how Garrels herself is like so many of us in being of two minds regarding the war and its consequences.

This thoughtful and powerful account of reporting from the front line should not be missed!