War Reporting for Cowards

"War Reporting for Cowards is the Iraw War--with all of its horrors and absurdities--through the eyes of a "war virgin" who was there, in the heat of battle, and wishing he were anywhere but. 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 the Long-Distance Death Dealers, a battalion of gung ho Marines who, when they aren't playing Monopoly using Baghdad and France as Park Place and Boardwalk, are a "disassembly line, churning out Irawui body parts." they switch between shunning him and threatening to shoot him in the head 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 on-the-ground story of Iraw in a way that is extraodinarily honest, heartfelt, and bitterly hilarious. It is sure to become a classic of war reportage.