Means of Escape: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Life and Death in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Vietnam
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.