Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War and the Aftermath as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels

National Public Radios correspondent provides a brilliant intimate on-the-ground account of history in the making with Naked in Baghdad. . As NPRs senior foreign correspondent Anne Garrels has covered conflicts in Chechnya Bosnia Kosovo Afghanistan and elsewhere. She is renowned for direct down-to-earth insightful reportage and for her independent take on what she sees. One of only sixteen un-embedded American journalists who stayed in Baghdads now-legendary Palestine Hotel throughout the American invasion of Iraq she was at the very center of the storm. Naked in Baghdad gives us the sights sounds and smells of our latest war with unparalleled vividness and immediacy.. Garrelss narrative starts with several trips she made to Baghdad before the war beginning in October 2002. At its heart is her evolving relationship with her Iraqi driver/minder Amer who becomes her friend and confidant often serving as her eyes and ears among the populace and taking her where no other reporter was able to penetrate. Amers own strong reactions and personal dilemma provide a trenchant counterpoint to daily events. The story is also punctuated by e-mail bulletins sent by Garrelss husband Vint Lawrence to their friends around the world giving a private view of the rough-and-tumble often dangerous life of a foreign correspondent along with some much-needed comic relief.. The result is enthralling deeply personal utterly authentic--an on-the-ground picture of the war in Iraq that no one else could have written. As Chicago Sun-Times critic Lloyd Sachs wrote about Garrelss work in Baghdad a few choice words honestly delivered are worth more than a thousand pictures . . . In your minds eye they carry lasting truth.