It's What I Do

MacArthur Genius Grant winner Lynsey Addario's relentlesspursuit of complex truths drive this heart-pounding and inspirational memoir ofa photographer's life.

Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a youngphotographer when the events of September 11, 2001, changed the world. One ofthe few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call toreturn and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would oftenfind herself making—not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life,but to set out across the world, face the chaos of crisis, and make a name forherself.

Addario finds in photography a way to travel with a purpose,and It's What I Do is the story ofthat singular calling—how it shapes and drives her life and how it changes thelives of others. She captures virtually every major theater of war of thetwenty-first century and from it creates a historical document of truth on theinternational conflicts that have made, and remade, our world. She photographsthe Afghan people before and after Taliban reign, the civilian casualties andmisunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages andthe countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against womenin the Congo and tells the riveting inside story of her headline-makingkidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.

As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken asseriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys' club of aprofession. Rather than choose between her personal life and profession,Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become herhusband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take awayfrom it, and as a new mother, she gains an even more intensely personalunderstanding of the fragility of life.

Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death fortheir freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but alsothe fate of society.It's What I Do is more than just asnapshot of life on the front lines—it is witness to the human cost of war.