Anderson detects voyeuristic lust behind his own previous sallies into hot spots. Loyd's attempt to fathom ethnic violence in the Balkans via soul-searching memoir feels like some kind of landmark in reporting. I know of no other book that uses other peoples' misery for self-help. He's no Fred Cuny. Still, Loyd is an honest man who wants to come clean about his profession.
Violence can be a turn-on, for killers, audiences, and writers alike.
Anderson narrowly escapes execution by both trigger-happy Russians and Chechens, a scrape that both terrifies him and serves as a climax of the biography. Loyd went to war to kill the pain of being a junkie and found himself addicted to another kind of suffering. In the new millennium, with civil wars growing smaller, seemingly more numerous, more vicious, and more pointless, it's not only soldiers and civilians who are filling up the hospital wards. Richard B. Woodward is a writer and editor based in New York. Tell us what you think.