The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan : Book

Search ISBN:0802140254 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan Reference Book. Classifications : Afghanistan Asia History Subjects Books General Middle East History Subjects Books 21st Century World History Subjects Books General World History Subjects Books Relations International Politics Nonfi . Click the following link to view the cover of The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan.

1) Paperback Book The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan by Grove Press. Anderson is a great writer and I enjoyed his biography of Che. This book is a series of articles Anderson wrote for the New Yorker magazine. It is obvious that Anderson placed himself at some risk in getting these stories and I enjoyed his viewpoint on post Taliban Afghanistan. The only good insightful material was about the assasination of Massoud and how it was done. Little of this has filtered out to the West. Much of the rest of the book was a rehash of what other journalists have found out about Afghanistan.

This is a short enjoyable read by a great writer. There are other books out there that are better. However, this is a concise read on post Taliban Afghanistan.¤

2) Paperback Book The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan by Grove Press. I was really looking forward to reading this book to learn what was happening on the ground in Afghanistan in the months immediately after 9/11. But I ended up really not liking it, mostly because of the writing style.

The chapters alternate between the articles Jon Lee Anderson wrote for the New Yorker from Afghanistan and the emails he exchanged with his editor during that same period. I enjoyed the emails, which provided great insight into the challenges and difficulties, not to mention the dangers, that reporters faced in that part of the world during that period. My problem, though, was with the articles themselves. The writing, frankly, was boring. I´m sure it is considered extremely literary among those who are familiar with old school writing styles. It has that Graham Greene/Paul Theroux flair, where the writer sets himself up as an everyman passing through some distant land and records his experiences and observations in a travelogue-style that I´m sure was highly engaging in an era when contemporaneous forms of media didn´t condition us to expect something livelier. But today, that style comes across as unnecessarily slow and oblique. While I ate up the emails, reading the articles themselves was more like wading through quicksand. I repeatedly found myself going back over a passage three or four times to try to understand where Anderson was (in his narrative), what he was trying to communicate, and how it related to the preceding passage.

The shame is that I´m convinced Anderson had much to relate and could have delivered a much more compelling narrative and offered much more insight into the Afghanistan of that period, if only he had used a different style of writing.

(And I will add that I´m somewhat self-conscious about writing this, because I know Anderson has been heralded as one of the great foreign correspondents of our era. I have no doubt about his ability to get where it´s happening, when it´s happening and to do great on-the-ground reporting. I simply think the writing style needs to be updated for a modern audience.)

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3) Paperback Book The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan by Grove Press. Mr. Anderson got into Afghanistan at the beginning of the war, talked to anybody who would talk to him, and recorded his conversations. That´s it. Out of this he got a couple articles for the New Yorker, but not enough to make the requisite inch and a quarter book thickness, so he filled in with emails between him and his editor. I´m not kidding, this is all there is to the book. No American who knew what was going on (by his admission) would talk to him, and the Afghanis who knew what was going on gave him their boilerplate PR spiel. You would learn more about the latest afghani war by watching the network news sound bites, and MUCH more by reading the reportage and think pieces that came out of Afghanistan from NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times (hey guys, what about an anthology of this stuff?). Don´t waste your money and time.¤

4) Paperback Book The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan by Grove Press. The Lion´s Grave, Dispatches from Afghanistan by Jon Lee Anderson takes you inside the first few weeks of the war in Afghanistan as American forces moved across the country. Several reporters followed the soldiers into combat, expect Anderson covered the war from the perspective of the Afghani Northern Alliance and the newly freed people. Anderson is one of the first reporters into the country after September 11th. Using several connections he manages to attain a passport into the country through the Russian embassy. The moment he enters the country Anderson places his life in danger. He is on the front lines reporting the war, expect he has no safe haven like the American reporters did in Operation Iraqi freedom. There are no American troops to protect him if he comes under attack, and the only other people around that spoke English were his translator and his photographer, who was from Germany.
The book is a collection of all the pieces Anderson wrote while covering the war for "The New Yorker" magazine. He has worked for the magazine for 20 years, and has covered hot beds of conflict around the globe.
Connecting each separate story is a series of emails that Anderson wrote to his editor who was back home in the states. I believe their intended purpose was to help connect each story and create a time line of events that helps lay the groundwork for Anderson´s stories. But the emails end up feeling more like they are just their filling up space and padding the content to create a book. Plus more often then not they swing and miss. While some are very revealing and show the hardships Anderson endured while covering the war, "Another big dust story today, and a cold front. Visibility is almost nil, and the sat phone transmission is very bad. I´ve been trying for several hours to download two emails that are in my system," others seem to be just boring exchanges in which you only hear one end of the conversation.
I will admit that since I was not familiar with Afghani history I did have trouble keeping up with some of his stories. Several names might be thrown at the reader all a once making it hard to keep track of who was who. Then you throw city names into the mix and you could easily find yourself very confused.
Overall I would have to recommend the book. It is an interesting look into recent history from a non-American viewpoint of the world. And anyone interested in the Middle East should definitely give this book a try. I give it 4 stars.¤

5) Paperback Book The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan by Grove Press. A quote on the top of this paperback reads "raw combat reportage... it´s easy to miss the bullets whizzing by". I was surely taken in by this and just as surely disappointed.

At one point Mr. Anderson describes how a Mujahideen soldier reaches under his chair and steals his can of Pepsi. Mr. Anderson snatches the can back and this is the level of wartime action you can expect to find in this pedestrian account of Afghanistan after September Eleventh.

This is reporting from behind enemy lines - WAY behind them. It is a series of articles written about interviews the author conducts with the major players in Afghanistan. Each article is "framed" by not particularly interesting emails describing the difficulties involved with travelling to and around in the country, and the challenges of communicating with satellite phones.

The Lion´s Grave serves as a readable introduction to the history of Afghanistan through the eyes and ears of those who shaped it and lived through it. It fills in a lot of face-to-face detail about the larger-than-life characters jostling for power in the remains of a smashed country that has undergone one major upheaval after another. It is also a chilling account of how bad things are in that part of the world, and how its people are indivisibly split by a common religion, and united by a hatred of the U.S.

It is NOT raw combat footage. For that, try Black Hawk Down and/or ChickenHawk.¤

New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson arrived in Afghanistan to report for the magazine ten days before U.S. bombers began pounding Al Qaeda and Taliban forces. His dispatches provide an unprecedented and riveting on-the-ground account of the Afghan conflict, and his e-mails to the magazine — selections of which frame the pieces here — paint a vivid behind-the-scenes portrait of war journalism. From the battle for the Taliban bastion of Kunduz and the interim government´s clumsy takeover of Kabul, to the search for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves and the truth of Al Qaeda´s assassination of charismatic Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud — two days before September 11, 2001 — Anderson offers an unprecedented look into the forces that shape the conflict and the players who may threaten Afghanistan´s future. In the distinguished tradition of New Yorker war reporting, The Lion´s Grave illuminates a region to which we will be inextricably bound for some time to come.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 14-Nov-2008, 08021402549780802140258, 390-230-540-350-501-TGB-DCB-8

The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan

Author - Jon Lee Anderson ... [Goo?] [Posters]

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