Dispatches from the Edge

May 8, 2006
HarperCollins touts the handsome, prematurely gray host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°
as the "prototype for a twenty-first century newsman." Sadly, that statement is all too true. This brief, self-involved narrative reaffirms a troubling cultural shift in news coverage: journalists used to cover the story; now, more than ever, they are the story. Cooper is an intrepid reporter: he's traveled to tsunami-ravaged Asia, famine-plagued Niger, war-torn Somalia and Iraq, and New Orleans post-Katrina. Here, however, the plights of the people and places he visits take a backseat to the fact that Cooper is, well, there. The Yale-educated son of heiress and designer Gloria Vanderbilt weaves personal tragedies (at 10, he lost his father to heart disease and later his older brother to suicide) awkwardly into far graver stories of suffering he's observing. Even when he plies the reader with his own unease ("the more sadness I saw, the more success I had") and obliquely decries TV news's demand for images of extreme misery ("merely sick won't warrant more than a cut-away shot"), he seems to place himself in front of his subjects. Cooper is an intelligent, passionate man and he may be a terrific journalist. But this book leaves one feeling he's little more than a television personality.

September 4, 2006
Most listeners will already be familiar with Anderson Cooper's dangerous field reporting on CNN. While this autobiography is heavy with those tales of wars and natural disasters, it is also rife with a surprising number of very personal incidents and revelations. His straightforward reading of his on-camera adventures is clear and engaging. But what keeps this reading from being great is his detachment. Perhaps because he has spent his professional life trying to be objective in his role as a journalist (although it could be argued that he became a media star when that facade cracked during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina) the more personal bits of the book are spoken with a level of distance that doesn't quite match up with the subject matter, especially when dealing with such delicate personal issues as his feelings concerning the suicide of his brother. Anderson is a sensational writer and reporter, but this mixture of public and private dispatches would have more power if he'd let his professional persona slip more. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Reviews, May 8).