I never would have thought it possible, but it can in fact be done - you can write a book about the Iraq War (II) and remain politically neutral. Chris Ayres manages this remarkable feat in his autobiographical account, WAR REPORTING FOR COWARDS, by staying focused on his own experiences both before and during the war.

Chris Ayres makes for an unlikely war reporter, and WAR REPORTING FOR COWARDS spends most of its length trying to explain how he, the London Times' Los Angeles entertainment reporter, ended up embedded with a marine artillery regiment. To explain it, he recounts his career as a journalist, bringing a jaundiced and cynical eye to bear on the profession, its practitioners, and himself. His self-professed vanity and cowardice combined to find him riding in a humvee across the Iraqi desert during the charge towards Baghdad...and finding the first excuse he could to get back out.

This book is a darkly humorous account, not just of the war itself, but of journalism and journalists. Ayres prose is clean and light, mixing humor, pathos and drama in equal measures as he recounts his own confused thoughts and actions through the momentous events of recent years. WAR REPORTING FOR COWARDS is an excellent read, and I highly recommend it.