Looking for Trouble Book

From the war-torn jungles of Nicaragua to the inner circle of Russia's black market, Leslie Cockburn (One Point Safe) recounts in vivid detail her experiences of being one of the first women to break into the old boy's club of Third World reporting in Looking for Trouble. While living on a houseboat on the Thames River in London and studying the finer points of Gambian oral poetry, Cockburn was convinced by a friend who had recently befriended a NBC filming crew in Morocco to pursue a career in journalism. Lured by the excitement and glamour of television reporting, Cockburn left academia and landed a job as an NBC News correspondent. Within a short time, she found herself face-to-face with Momar Quadaffi (an interview she almost missed because she overslept) and hobnobbing with the world's key political players. Cockburn's account, from the dredges of Haiti and Papa Doc's gruesome regime to the Sunni-Muslim coup in Afghanistan that barred women from working and seeing male doctors, is a bizarre behind-the-scenes look at Third World reporting. For example, when Cockburn and her husband Andrew befriended Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar, the most powerful crime lord in South America, he used to sign his letters to them with his thumbprint. Or how about the time she braved the wholesale destruction of Somalia when she was six months pregnant? Her documentaries have gotten her blackballed from the Pentagon, the State Department, and a couple of White House reigns, but they have also changed public opinion, moved policy makers, and helped correct injustices around the world.Read More