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Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival |  | Author: Anderson Cooper
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
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Seller: atlanta-book-company
Rating:  230 reviews
Sales Rank: 87932
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0061136689
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.92
EAN: 9780061136689
ASIN: 0061136689
Publication Date: May 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780061136689 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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| • | Kindle Edition - Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir Of War, Disasters, And Survival | | • | Audio CD - Dispatches From the Edge, A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival (Read by the Author,Unabriged, Audio CDs) | | • | Audio CD - Dispatches From the Edge | | • | Unknown Binding - Dispatches From the Edge | | • | Unknown Binding - Dispatches from the Edge : A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Paperback - Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Library Binding - Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Hardcover - Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Hardcover - Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Paperback - Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Hardcover - Dispatches from the Edge | | • | Audible Audio Edition - Dispatches from the Edge | | • | Kindle Edition - Dispatches from the Edge | | • | Kindle Edition - Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir Of War, Disasters And Survival | | • | Audio CD - Dispatches from the Edge CD: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival | | • | Audio CD - Dispatches from the Edge CD: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival |
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| 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
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 230
 Brave memoir May 23, 2006
P. Smith (Northeast)
166 out of 182 found this review helpful
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.
Moving and literate June 2, 2006
bookcrazy (Athens, GA)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
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.
seemlessly woven May 31, 2006
Laurie Arnold (Tuxedo, NY)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
I appreciated the way Cooper wove his personal life and honest emotions into his work as a journalist. Some other reviewer asked, "What's the point?" The point of any memoir is to get a flavor of the how, why, and what of a person's life. And to learn how they make sense of it. Cooper does this honestly. He often blatently describes such things as his need to enter into tragedy as an escape from personal tragedy-- or a way to stay "in motion." Yet, it is in these stories and experiences ie: Katrina, Sri Lanka, that Cooper finds the voice, and the emotions--the whole or sense of his life-- and communicates that to us. The tragedies are not ones he 'uses' as someone else wrote, but they are mirrors. A big difference! Cooper's vulnerablity (what makes readers interested),and ability to gain the reader's attention by accessible, clear and passionate writing is a success.
ANDERSON'S BRILLIANT PERSONAL and INVESTIGATIVE '360 DEGREE' BOOK June 2, 2006
RBSProds (Deep in the heart of Texas)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
Five "Brilliant" Stars!! It's like Anderson Cooper started writing about what he found in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and his life literally began to seep through the pages: a brilliant, opportunistic, tragic, and ultimately triumphant life which is a tremendous 'focus lens' that he uses to view everything from distant wars to a rampaging Tsunami to Niger, to Hurricane Katrina. He touches on that life in the Introduction dropping us into his life at age 10 and intersperses "his" story around "their" stories throughout the remainder of the book.
I first encountered Anderson Cooper when he and Alison Stewart did the ABC late night news and those two kept alot of Americans up late as they chatted about and around the news. Even then you could tell those two were destined for great things: she's now doing "The Most" on MSNBC and Anderson is "the big news guy" replacing Aaron Brown on CNN's prime time news, called "Anderson Cooper 360". Now he's being paid the big bucks for stories that he once did for free as a correspondent with a fake press pass for the unsuspecting "Channel One".
I was surprised that what I expected to be exclusively about Hurricane Katrina became something so personal: about his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragedies of his father's and his brother's deaths. The fact that both mother and surviving son have successfully dealt with these tragedies has done nothing but made them strong and allowed them to move on. In reporting on Katrina, the Tsunami, Iraq, Niger, and the other locales, Anderson takes no prisoners in assessing the damage to lives and property. This is an engrossing, sometimes shocking, and truly informative personal memoir and investigative reporting. May Anderson Cooper find himself "never having to slow down, never having to land". Five Big Investigative Stars!!
(Notes:
*Never one to leave a deep subject alone, Anderson Cooper is broadcasting similar stories under the title of "Dispatches from Katrina" on his CNN "360 Degree" cable show, as I write this review.
*This review of based on an EBook digital download. Save a tree, download your books whenever possible. Publishers, please do offer all books in digital formats.)
A Book Filled with Suffering and Tragedy June 12, 2006
C. W. Emblom (Ishpeming, Michigan USA)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
Although this book is only 207 pages long Anderson Cooper has done a masterful job in tying together his own personal tragedy of losing both his father and brother at a young age, but also his experiences covering tragedies around the world. What I admire most about Mr. Cooper is his desire to put his own life at risk, and be a first rate reporter while helping people in some small way when his personal wealth would make it possible for him to live a life of ease. This is a book filled with tragedies, most notably hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, but also the tsunami in Sri Lanka, the starvation in Africa, and the war in Sarajevo. Anderson Cooper is a credit to himself and to CNN.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 230
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