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WAR--with all of its horrors and absurdities seen through the eyes of a "war virgin"

Atlantic Monthly Press
July 2005
Featuring: Chris Ayres
240 pages
ISBN: 0871138956
Hardcover
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Chris Ayres

Chris Ayres
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Chris Ayres is a small-town boy, a hypochondriac, and a
neat freak with an anxiety disorder. Not exactly the
picture of a war correspondent. But when his boss asks him
if he would like to go to Iraq, he doesn't have the guts to
say no.
After signing a $1 million life-insurance policy, studying
a tutorial on repairing severed limbs, and spending $20,000
in camping gear (only to find out that his bright yellow
tent makes him a sitting duck), Ayres is embedded with a
battalion of gung ho Marines who either shun him or
threaten him when he files an unfavorable story. As time
goes on, though, he begins to understand them (and his
inexplicably enthusiastic fellow war reporters) more and
more: Each night of terrifying combat brings, in the
morning, something more visceral than he has ever
experienced-the thrill of having won a fight for survival.
In the tradition of M*A*S*H, Catch-22, and other classics
in which irreverence springs from life in extremis, War
Reporting for Cowards tells the story of Iraq in a way that
is extraordinarily honest, heartfelt, and bitterly
hilarious.