Looking for Trouble

The narrator is one of the strongest female characters I've read in a long time---intelligent, well-read, daring, tactful, witty, and with good taste in everything. Her adventures through the most dangerous political areas put a new spin on what you hear in the newspaper, from rather ridiculous dictator families to the horrible living conditions of villages in countries that have declared martial law. It's a fast read.

Well-written, fast-paced account of a smart, savvy female journalist's rise to power in the male-dominated media area of combat coverage & "sensitive" foreign issues. It offers inside stories on a number of the world's political hot spots (and some of the US's nastiest foreign policy decisions). The book is structured engagingly too. The first chapter covers one of the author's more recent assignments -- and a journalistic pinnacle, as the Taliban story Leslie produces is co-anchored by Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer; the latter, not Walters, went with her to Afghanistan. The subsequent chapters chronicle her some of her career's hairiest moments from its start two decades ago. Leslie's vivid descriptions of what she sees, as well as the acerbic comments she drily inserts, make her seem personally likable and as though she'd be an extremely entertaining dinner guest (though possessed of an excellent political BS detector). More on her family would have been nice, but this book is focused primarily on her work and how she does it; snapshots rather than the full-length autobiography with full-fleshed auxiliary characters. Still, riveting and hard to put down.

I have not been so enthralled with a journalist's memoirs since the first half of Theodore H. White's "In Search of History." This book was fascinating from cover to cover. When I told my wife about it she would open up the book at random and read for several pages, totally engrossed. She almost read the entire book through this sporadic grazing. My enthusiasm for "Out of Control" is so complete that I am biased to the point of not being able to find anything wrong with it. I think readers who opine that there is not enough detail are missing the point. This is a personal snapshot of one person's 20-year professional life, not a treatise on the dozen-odd events that she has covered, each of which would require a couple of books to adequately detail. I also think the reader who complains about name dropping also misses the point. This does injustice to Ms. Cockburn's immense talent for using wit, a biting writing style, and a well-earned license for subjectivity to tell a fascinating story.

Ms Cockburn's recollections of her adventures gives new meaning to the concept of gutsy journalists. She recounts actual events with skill and sensitivity, making even the most hair-raising segements credible and enjoyable. This chronicle has immense appeal for the arm- chair traveler and seasoned veteran of foreign travels alike. The smells, sounds, sights and textures come alive in anecdotes gleaned from her wide-ranging and fearless pursuit of "news" that touches the very elemental core of human experience. What in other, less-skilled writers might be considered "name-dropping," in Cock- burns matter-of-fact style becomes endearing. Chalk one up for an intelligent, fearless profes- sional who is not afraid to deal with hardships and trials of a nomadic existence, while still main- taining ties to family, friends, and colleagues. Read this one and hope for more like it.