War Correspondents

Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski died on January 23, 2007, at the age of 74. As a foreign correspondent, Kapuscinski covered coups and revolutions in the developing world for forty years. Many of his articles appeared in a series of books that made him famous: The Soccer War, Another Day of Life, and Shah of Shahs. This interview originally aired in 1/21/1988.

Journalist Michael Weisskopf is the senior correspondent for the Washington bureau of Time magazine. In 2003, while on assignment in Baghdad, he threw a live Iraqi grenade from the back of an open Humvee. He saved himself, four soldiers and Time's photographer, but lost his hand. Weisskopf's new book is Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57.

Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post has been reporting from Lebanon. Shadid won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for international reporting. His latest book, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, has just come out in paperback. Shadid is of Lebanese descent and grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla.

While reporting on the torture scandal at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Jackie Spinner was nearly kidnapped. Shaken by the experience, the Washington Post journalist returned to work, spending a total of nine months in Iraq.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins has been covering Iraq... thoroughly. In April he received the George Polk Award for War Reporting for his riveting, first-hand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah.

In the early 1990s, NPR journalist Scott Simon reported from war-torn Sarajevo. Those experiences formed the basis for his debut novel, Pretty Birds, the story of a 16-year-old girl who adapts to her violent times.

In April, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins will receive the George Polk Award for War Reporting for "his riveting, first-hand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah." We talk with him about the rebuilding country and its recent elections.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins recently accompanied the Marines of Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines for eight days in November as they took over Fallujah.

Anderson writes the Letters from Baghdad column for The New Yorker magazine. His new book is The Fall of Baghdad. Anderson's conversations with people in Iraq, including an artist, a driver and a plastic surgeon, as well as his travels around the country, formed the basis of his new book.

Shadid is Islamic affairs correspondent for The Washington Post. For more than a year now he has reported from Baghdad and has just returned to the United States. He just received the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Before working for the Post, Shadid was a correspondent at The Boston Globe's Washington bureau. He spent nine years with The Associated Press, five of them in Cairo. He is the author of Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam.

Engel was the only American television correspondent who was in Baghdad before, during and after the war. On the next Fresh Air, Engel talks about how he bribed officials, woke to gunfire and witnessed atrocities of battle. His new book is A Fist in the Hornet's Nest.

She is Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post. She has covered South Asia for the Post since 1999, reporting from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. She has a new memoir, Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia.

Journalist Vernon Loeb covers the military for The Washington Post. He just returned from five weeks in Iraq. He discusses the situation there and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

We catch up with him about the latest news from Iraq. He's in the United States for just one day, and then he goes back to Baghdad. Burns has won several Pulitzer Prizes for his overseas war reports.

Sennott covered the war in Iraq, but not as an imbedded reporter. He talks about his recent return to Iraq and also discusses the relationship between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are about to meet in London. Sennott is the London bureau chief for The Boston Globe. Sennott is also the author of the book The Body and The Blood: The Holy Land's Christians At the Turn of a New Millennium.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new biography, Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead. It's about journalist Martha Gellhorn, a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War. She was also Ernest Hemingway's third wife.

NPR's Senior Foreign Correspondent Anne Garrels was one of the few journalists still in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq. Often she reported from her room at the Palestine Hotel as bombs flew overhead. In her new book, Naked in Baghdad, she writes about the war and its aftermath. The book also contains the e-mails that her husband Vint Lawrence sent to friends keeping them informed of her daily life in Baghdad. Garrels has also reported from the former Soviet republics, China, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Israel, and is the recipient of the Alfred I.

Ricks covers the military for The Washington Post. Ricks recently returned from Iraq where he was semi-embedded with troops in Baghdad.

We remember journalist Elizabeth Neuffer of The Boston Globe. She died last week in Iraq from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. She was reporting on the country's efforts to rid itself of the influence of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Neuffer was the Globe's Foreign Affairs/U.N. Correspondent. She reported on the fall of the Soviet Union, as well as ethnic strife in Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda. She has also reported on the war on terrorism from Afghanistan.

Charles Sennott is foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe. He was recently in northern Iraq where he traveled independently with a group of journalists. He was in Kirkuk when allied forces took the city from Baathist control. In Afghanistan, in 2001 Sennott traveled with the Northern Alliance. He is also the author of the new book The Body and The Blood: The Holy Land's Christians At the Turn of a New Millennium. (PublicAffairs). Sennott was the Globe's Middle East bureau chief.