On All Fronts

October 28, 2019
Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, recounts her life in journalism in this insightful memoir. Ward grew up in a well-to-do family in New York City and London and attended Yale; after watching the 9/11 attacks on TV, she found a “sense of purpose and clarity” and knew she “had to go to the front lines.” Her career began as a desk assistant for Fox in 2003, from there she worked for CBS, ABC, and finally CNN, where she focused heavily on the Middle East. She conducted much of her reporting covertly and during combat, and she details her often harrowing experiences that eventually took a toll on her physical and mental well-being. She survived the 2005 attack on the Fox headquarters in Baghdad; escaped a violent crowd of Han Chinese, who, after beating a group of Uighur men, turned to the reporters present; and smuggled memory cards containing images of the Arab Spring protests out of Syria in her underwear. But it’s the connections she made with the civilians that really tell the story of these war-torn regions and demonstrate an empathy that makes Ward’s work so accessible, as when she sings to a room of Muslim women during a heavy shelling attack. Along the way, Ward shares some anecdotes such as meeting Quentin Tarantino as a stand-in on the set of Kill Bill, and meeting Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif at a dinner party in Moscow in 2007. Ward surprises in this affecting insider view of international reporting.

January 15, 2020
A London-based foreign correspondent looks back on a career covering life in war zones. Now chief international correspondent for CNN, Ward, who has won an Emmy and two Peabody Awards, was the only child of a wealthy American mother and a British investment banker father who separated when she was young. Raised first in New York and then in London, the author studied comparative literature at Yale until 9/11 inspired her to seek a career in journalism. Beginning with an overnight desk assistant's job at Fox News, where she experienced the "pervasive sexism" others have reported there, she worked her way up in journalism, adding Arabic to the five languages she already knew. Along the way, she spent time in Moscow, Baghdad, and Beirut, sometimes embedded with troops and sometimes hanging out in hotels with other journalists waiting for a story to break. Her descriptions of her experiences at all the sites are vivid and precise. Among the assignments that clearly meant the most to Ward were her several stints in Syria, where several sources to whom she became close disappeared, leaving her both bereft and conscious of her own privilege as a foreign journalist able to leave the country. Even more than her other jobs, the time in Syria taught her that "the idea of 'making a difference' in journalism is as seductive as it is dangerous....The reality is that we are not there to solve the problem, we are there to illuminate it." Although Ward focuses more on her assignments than her inner life, it's obvious that as her time on the job continued, she suffered physical and emotional tolls, and the risk of "burning out amid one high-pressure trip after another" became higher. At the end of the book, she writes about how, after a brief respite for a marriage and the birth of a baby following a pregnancy that placed her at risk of contracting malaria in Bangladesh, she was back in the field in Afghanistan. A thoughtful account of the excitement and pitfalls of war reporting.

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February 1, 2020

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center inspired all kinds of responses among American citizens. Ward (chief international correspondent, CNN) saw a world in which misunderstanding resulted in violence and tragedy, thus commiting to journalism as a path to generating compassion across cultures. With a degree in Russian literature and no journalism experience, she launched her career with an unpaid internship at CNN in Moscow. Ward documents her growth as an award-winning journalist covering conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Egypt. In her 15-year career, she reported for Fox, CBS, and ABC, winning five Emmys and two Murrow Awards. Here she intertwines her investigative and embedded reporting with her personal life--getting married and giving birth to a son--and acknowledges the personal toll of writing about such brutal events. VERDICT Ward's journalism skills shine, putting readers on the front lines. Readers interested in the life stories of intrepid women journalists and the nature of investigative, international journalism will be captivated by this engrossing account.--Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2019
Award-winning journalist and chief international correspondent for CNN, Ward details her often harrowing career in this page-turning memoir. Like many, Ward found her calling following 9/11, although her privileged, international childhood and education led her not to the military but to journalism. Multilingual and willing to go places others were not, she moved up the ladder quickly. Based in Baghdad, Moscow, Beirut, and Beijing, Ward was often in danger as she illuminated the human costs of war, natural disasters, and political turmoil. But it is Syria that she was drawn to again and again, even as this took a physical and emotional toll. Ward's work involves explaining complicated and ever-changing political situations, mostly in short segments, and her writing displays these skills. Readers will come away with at least a basic understanding of multiple international conflicts. This is a wonderful addition to the list of recent titles about women working in war-torn lands, like Amaryllis Fox's Life Undercover (2018) and Lindsey Hilsum's biography of Marie Colvin, In Extremis (2018).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)