War Journal

May 5, 2008
NBC News' Middle East bureau chief Engel (A Fist in the Hornet's Nest
) tags along on marine patrols and survives his share of ambushes, truck bombs and kidnapping attempts in this riveting memoir of the Iraq War. His worm's-eye reportage of the spiraling carnage exposes the grisly details omitted from nightly newscasts—a dog carrying a severed human head, a massacre scene in a bakery redolent of sweet aromas and the merry trilling of a victim's cellphone—along with his own numbed reactions. His battles with network suits and right-wing bloggers who insist that he find good news to report are a leitmotif, as is his scrupulous discernment of the big picture beneath the chaos of war. Fluent in Arabic, with access to Iraqi prime ministers and insurgents as well as American leaders (including George W. Bush), he deftly elucidates the bitter rivalry between dethroned Sunnis and rising Shiites and, behind that, Iran's skillful consolidation of power in Iraq as the United States flounders. Engel's fine, heartfelt but disabused account of this bewildering conflict renders the suffering in Iraq with understanding and compassion. Photos.

Starred review from May 1, 2008
Anyone who has followed television coverage of the Iraq War knows NBCsEngel. As chronicled in his first book, A Fist in the Hornets Nest (2004), he snuck into Baghdad as a freelance journalist to report on shock and awe. This is what hes seen in the five years since, and while some readers will want to turn away from the horror and brutality, Engel bears witness to what has been done to the people of Iraq and what they are doing to each other. Reported in an almostherky-jerky manner, as befitting a journalist who hears gunfire as a lullaby, this memoir offers stunning testimony of mans inhumanity to man and, perhaps even more forcefully, of the havoc that our most firmly held ideals, whether about democracy or religion, can wreak on human lives. Underlying the mayhem is Engels contention, amply proven throughout, that Iraq is the embodiment ofthe Law of Unintended Consequences. Encouraging democracy in a country that is 60 percent Shiite, the U.Sgave Iran everything it wanted, by way of the clerics who, all along, have had their own plan for Iraq. A fascinating chapter chronicles Engels meeting with a well-informedGeorge Bush, who is comfortable sayingwe willneed troops in Iraq for 40 yearsWhether describing IED attacks, kidnappings, or soldiers hardshipsor pondering how to hold onto ones humanity in hellEngel writes with heartbreaking weariness. This is required reading for anyone who wants to know whats really going on over there.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)