Am I Dead Yet?: 71 Countries, 36 War Zones, 1 Man's Opinion.

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

John Scully is little known outside the Canadian television business, but he worked for many years as a producer for the BBC, CBC, Global, and CTV, most notably perhaps on the CBC’s “The Journal.” He paints himself as a journalist of the old school: hard-drinking, cursing, devoted to getting the story wherever he is. And in most of those places, including 13 times in Lebanon during its long civil war, it seems he or his crew had violent stomach upsets, were shot at, and got repeatedly hammered. This is somewhat tedious after 50 pages, let alone 200, but the writing is breezy, and there is much fun in seeing Scully denounce Mother Teresa, the Royals, the Yanks, the anchors he worked with, and just about everyone else. More seriously, he argues that the practice of embedding journalists guarantees that no serious, critical reporting can emerge from war zones.