Published in 2006, Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge was a New York Times Bestseller and continues to be a popular read as Cooper’s celebrity grows with the introduction of his daytime talk show Anderson Live. And the only thing better than reading this fascinating book is listening to the audiobook, narrated by the author himself.
Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disaster and Survival is actually part memoir and part news reporting, in which Cooper reveals how various news stories—including the Niger famine, the tsunami in Sri Lanka, and Hurricane Katrina—affected him psychologically and emotionally.
Cooper began his career by making a fake press pass and acting as an independent "correspondent", reporting from war torn countries like Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia. He was able to sell his video reports to Channel One, a news channel broadcasted in junior high and high schools across the United States, where he had previously been employed as a fact checker.
Anderson Cooper lost his father during heart surgery when he was ten years old, and his older brother Carson to suicide when Cooper was twenty-one and a student at Yale. He attributes his fascination with war-ravaged places as a response to these early losses, attempting to cope with his personal tragedies by focusing on the tragedies of others. Throughout his career he has been captivated by the resiliency of the human spirit.
Following his impassioned coverage of Hurricane Katrina, in which Cooper confronted various politicians for a too-little, too-late response to the devastation and suffering of the victims, the author/newsman was heralded as a new breed of emo-journalist. The term applies to news correspondents who display some degree of emotion related to the stories they broadcast and are willing to speak out and ask the tough questions. Dispatches from the Edge does a good job of demonstrating this type of journalism, with Cooper revealing the reflections and reactions one doesn’t necessarily see on camera.
"If you can get through the brutal ham-handed metaphors of the introduction, you might really like this book. I found his stories of his experiences and feelings to be quite interesting compelling, and his discussion of his emotions regarding his father's death and his brother's suicide was touching. He talks quite a bit about his reaction to the events he's covering, his feelings about the business of "news/journalism," both of which are things I have rarely seen from a prominent newsperson."
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The (4 out of 5 stars)