Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir

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Overview

David Greenway, a journalist’s journalist in the tradition of Michael Herr, David Halberstam, and Dexter Filkins. In this vivid memoir, he tells us what it’s like to report a war up close.

Reporter David Greenway was at the White House the day Kennedy was assassinated. He was in the jungles of Vietnam in that war’s most dangerous days, and left Saigon by helicopter from the American embassy as the city was falling. He was with Sean Flynn when Flynn decided to get an entire New ...

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Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir

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Overview

David Greenway, a journalist’s journalist in the tradition of Michael Herr, David Halberstam, and Dexter Filkins. In this vivid memoir, he tells us what it’s like to report a war up close.

Reporter David Greenway was at the White House the day Kennedy was assassinated. He was in the jungles of Vietnam in that war’s most dangerous days, and left Saigon by helicopter from the American embassy as the city was falling. He was with Sean Flynn when Flynn decided to get an entire New Guinea village high on hash, and with him hours before he disappeared in Cambodia. He escorted John le Carre around South East Asia as he researched The Honourable Schoolboy. He was wounded in Vietnam and awarded a Bronze Star for rescuing a Marine. He was with Sidney Schanberg and Dith Pran in Phnom Penh before the city descended into the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Greenway covered Sadat in Jerusalem, civil war and bombing in Lebanon, ethnic cleansing and genocide the Balkans, the Gulf Wars (both), and reported from Afghanistan and Iraq as they collapsed into civil war.

This is a great adventure story—the life of a war correspondent on the front lines for five decades, eye-witness to come of the most violent and heroic scenes in recent history.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
04/21/2014
In this memoir, Boston Globe columnist Greenway narrates a professional life spent working in the most dangerous regions of the world. From the mid-1960s on, Greenway covered post-colonial states struggling with the consequences of the Cold War: Cambodia, Thailand, Lebanon, Laos, among many others. The Vietnam War in particular colored how he viewed future conflicts and American overreach as he watched history repeat itself in Afghanistan and Iraq. A Boston Brahmin who attended Yale as a legacy, Greenway roots lay in a genteel WASP America that was already vanishing by the time he was shot during the Tet Offensive (his attempt to save a wounded Marine there earned him a Bronze Star). Greenway’s professional and social connections provide him with a wide range of anecdotes that feature such figures as John le Carré and Sean Flynn (Errol’s son), a journalist who mysteriously disappeared in the Cambodian jungle. Greenway’s firsthand experiences add gravitas to his common-sense take on foreign policy. The real strengths of the book, however, are the vivid descriptions of life during wartime. Agent: Ike Williams, Williams & Bloom. (Aug.)
Deborah Amos
“Greenway has taken a second crack at a ‘first draft of history’ and given us a riveting, smart memoir filled with anecdotes and observations that come from years of reflection. He lets us in on the great secret of a war correspondent. A story is always more devious and complicated than the one written on deadline. Greenway now gives us the real scoop with humor and intelligence; a perspective that comes from mining his dog-eared reporter’s notebooks, some still flecked with dried blood and sweat. He has found remarkable stories. In the White House on the day of the Kennedy assassination, on the last flight out of Vietnam from the roof of the US embassy, Greenway was an eye-witness to momentous events. Fast-forward to Kabul and Baghdad where he observed the chaos of capitals collapsing into civil war. Greenway expands on the skills of a gifted war correspondent to write his personal account of remarkable history.”
Andrew J. Bacevich
“The central story of our time, David Greenway writes, is of ‘America stepping into other people's empires.’ Greenway spent a half-century covering that story with insight, panache, and no small amount of courage. In this vividly written memoir, ranging from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, he recounts his adventures and misadventures, while deftly portraying the cast of colorful characters—above all his fellow foreign correspondents—encountered along the way. The result is a riveting book.”
Seymour Hersh
“This is more than a memoir . . . it is a sophisticated modern history, with all of our foreign policy ignorance and misunderstanding etched in printer's ink. Greenway, whose reportage and later columns were always essential for people in my business, reminds us of what we are missing in these days of dwindling American interest in foreign affairs and dwindling coverage. How many Americans even know where foreign is? The guy always had information, guts . . . and style . . . and now he has produced an essential running commentary of our time.”
Joseph Lelyveld
“Greenway stands out among veteran correspondents for the range of his experience and his gifts as a raconteur. He is a splendid companion. Foreign Correspondent is packed with adventures and close calls. It is also an inquiry into why American power so often goes awry.”
William Shawcross
“Greenway is one of America’s greatest reporters. Covering the wars in Vietnam, the Middle East, and the Balkans with courage and honesty, he set the standard which many others seek to meet. It is a gift that he has now written his long overdue memoir. Gripping, lucid, thoughtful, it will be a classic. It should encourage another generation to follow his lead—to go out and discover and tell the truth about difficult decisions in distant, dangerous places and honor the profession of journalism.”
Booklist
“With an astute sense of the broader history behind conflicts, Greenway explores the harrowing process of shaking off colonial European powers and fighting for freedom and independence. … [A] fascinating look at one man’s career and 50 years of war, violence, and adventure.”
Columbia Journalism Review
“Greenway tells his story with freshness and color, and becoming touches of humility.”
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post
“Passages such as that one—and there are indeed others—are what elevate ‘Foreign Correspondent’ well above the run of the journalistic mill. It’s easy for journalism to turn one into a cynic, but Greenway seems not to have succumbed.”
the Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
“Passages such as that one—and there are indeed others—are what elevate ‘Foreign Correspondent’ well above the run of the journalistic mill. It’s easy for journalism to turn one into a cynic, but Greenway seems not to have succumbed.”
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“[Greenway] doesn’t just tell war stories (of which he has a million), but he observes the world and analyzes the way it has changed, and continues to change. All of this is delivered in the steady, clear prose of a veteran writer for the Boston Globe and Washington Post. It’s a book to make you fall in love with newspapers all over again.”
The Wall Street Journal
“…should be read by journalism students everywhere….Greenway gives a sense of reporting in an era when journalists were truly ‘correspondents,’ sending dispatches to bridge a gap in distance and time. He attentively distinguishes the various cultures of Southeast Asia—Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and, of course, Vietnam. He stayed there until the final day.”
Boston Globe
“Now we have a memoir that takes the title of Hitchcock’s film and provides a thought-provoking counterpoint to it...Greenway’s memoir is liberally peppered with happy recollections of comradery with fellow correspondents, to whom he throws many bouquets. If these enliven the story, the book’s chief virtue lies in being a succinct primer on post-World War II American foreign policy.”
Associated Press Staff
“An excellent primer to America's history . . . it's also guaranteed to whet any budding, young journalist's desire to cover war in far-flung places.”
Kirkus Reviews
2014-06-01
The life of a foreign correspondent who has reported from nearly 100 different countries.A golden age of overseas journalism coincided with a time of “wishful thinking” by the U.S. military, from Indochina to Afghanistan. Born in 1935 and raised in the Boston suburbs to a Harvard ornithologist father who “worked in the vanished age of the gentleman amateurs who went around the world collecting animals and birds for museums,” Greenway did indeed enjoy a privileged childhood and lucky start to a career in journalism as a stringer forTimeat Oxford. Becoming a war correspondent by chance, he arrived in Vietnam in 1967 at the first of many eye-opening posts through the decades, trips that revealed to him the horrendous toll of an increasingly horrifying conflict. Sagging morale among the American troops, suspicion by the South Vietnamese and truculence by the Vietcong intensified the overall paralysis. Greenway, who met many of the old journalist Asia hands—e.g., Michael Herr, Joseph Alsop, Frances FitzGerald—takes pains to delineate the array of opinions his colleagues held about the war. Joining theWashington Postin its Watergate heyday, Greenway continued to cover the war through the fall of Saigon. He also reported on the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge, the bombing of Laos (where, thanks to reporters like Tim Allman and Fred Branfman, the West became aware of the brutal effects of American bombs on civilians)—and other momentous events in Southeast Asia, while his wife and daughters lived mostly in Hong Kong. Greenway provides fascinating detail on the day-to-day travails of the foreign correspondent, and he fleshes out the back story of many of these shadowy conflicts—e.g., the long and charismatic reign of “mercurial” leader Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. The author was also the firstPostbureau chief in Israel, and he later moved to theBoston Globe, where he provided formidable coverage of the fall of the Soviet Union.Frank, seasoned, expert observations on the folly of U.S. military intervention.
Library Journal
06/15/2014
Greenway tells here selected stories from his life and career as a globe-trotting journalist, from his early days in Hong Kong and Vietnam to his later experiences covering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shuffling readers, in true memoir format, from both country to country and era to era, the author paints an impressive if strangely superficial picture of his decades-long career as a foreign correspondent for publications such as Time and the Washington Post. His fascinating personal reminiscences and professional anecdotes—conversations with fellow journalists and on-site perspectives on international incidents—are frequently dwarfed or scattered by heavy helpings of historical background, which while necessary for context are notably dry in comparison to the richness of Greenway's journalistic excepts. Readers looking for insight into the life of a 20th-century foreign correspondent may therefore come away disappointed, although veterans of similar background will find in the author a kindred spirit and visions of times and places worth remembering. VERDICT While wanting for depth and dazzle, Greenway's work snapshots a career of astounding scope and proportion. Recommended for readers with advanced interests in 20th-century journalism or the history of U.S. international relations.—Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781476761329
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Publication date: 8/19/2014
  • Pages: 320
  • Sales rank: 124018
  • Product dimensions: 6.10 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

H.D.S. Greenway has reported from 96 countries, and covered conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and the former Yugoslavia. He has been a contributing columnist for The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, and Global Post, and has been a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and Time magazine. He lives with his wife, JB Greenway, in Needham, Massachusetts.

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