Overview

Kevin Sites is a man on a mission. Venturing alone into the dark heart of war, armed with just a video camera, a digital camera, a laptop, and a satellite modem, the award-winning journalist covered virtually every major global hot spot as the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo! News. Beginning his journey with the anarchic chaos of Somalia in September 2005 and ending with the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Sites talks with rebels and government troops, child soldiers and child brides, and features the people on every side, including those caught in the cross fire. His honest reporting helps destroy the myths of war by putting a human face on war's inhumanity. Personally, Sites will come to discover that the greatest danger he faces may not be from bombs and bullets, but from the unsettling power of the truth.

Full Product Details

9780061228759

Table of Contents

Reviews

Kevin Sites represents the next step in the evolution of journalism. -- New York Post An essential read, especially for those who believe themselves to be world-wise or politically savvy. -- Library Journal (starred review) These images and dispatches form the numberless rooms of hell have an undeniable cumulative power. -- Kirkus Reviews

An online reporter visits some of the world's nastiest places, where wars rage and ordinary people with extraordinary courage suffer unspeakable pain and loss.Freelancing for NBC News in 2004, Sites shot the controversial footage seen around the world of a Marine murdering a helpless wounded Iraqi in a mosque. That episode and its aftermath, followed by his coverage of the 2004 tsunami (he happened to be scuba diving in the most affected region), form a prologue to the main story. When NBC offered him a staff job on the condition that he get a haircut, shave his goatee and go to correspondent 'boot camp,' Sites turned instead to Yahoo! News to develop his Hot Zone project: a website featuring footage, text and slide shows from the world's most searing spots. From September 2005 to August 2006, he skimmed the globe, stopping for brief periods to interview locals; observe battles; visit hospitals, morgues and ruined neighborhoods; and, when madness threatened, to surf or kick around a soccer ball with some teenagers. On his itinerary: Mogadishu, the Congo, Uganda, Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Israel and just about every other place where people were killing one another for reasons ranging from religious differences to territorial disputes. Sites believes that a single individual's story can often be the best way to make us see vast landscapes of brutality and suffering, and so he tells us about people who've lost limbs to land mines, entire families to a tsunami, a husband to errant shrapnel, a future to the insidious workings of Agent Orange. War poses as combat, but is really collateral damage, he writes. The actual fighting between armed groups is a small and infrequent element, while the violence they radiate on civil society and themselves will last for generations. The snapshot format necessarily risks superficiality, but these images and dispatches from the numberless rooms of hell have an undeniable cumulative power. (Kirkus Reviews)

These images and dispatches form the numberless rooms of hell have an undeniable cumulative power. -- Kirkus Reviews

These images and dispatches form the numberless rooms of hell have an undeniable cumulative power. --Kirkus Reviews Kevin Sites represents the next step in the evolution of journalism. --New York Post An essential read, especially for those who believe themselves to be world-wise or politically savvy. --Library Journal (starred review)

Author Information

Kevin Sites has spent more than a decade covering wars and conflicts for ABC, NBC, CNN, Yahoo! News, and Vice magazine. He is the author of In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars and The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. He is also an associate professor of journalism at the University of Hong Kong.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available