Winners and Losers” by Gloria Emerson, among the many articles and books she constantly offered me. She fed my interest in history as well as current international affairs, and—apart from my parents—was the single biggest influence shaping my college and career trajectory. “Winners and Losers” was perhaps the book that definitively tilted me toward journalism and international affairs, and specifically societies in conflict. At that time, in high school, I realized that I’d just missed one of the seminal experiences of our country—the Vietnam War—and Gloria’s book helped me “see” it firsthand. She captured in her photos and prose the searing experience of war for those living in that place, both the Vietnamese and the soldiers we sent to fight on behalf of South Vietnam and the anti-communist cause. I spent the first years of my journalism career in Central America covering the anti-communist wars there. Being a woman out in the middle of a war zone did not strike me as a strange idea since I had seen Gloria’s work. In most talks I give the question inevitably surfaces, why do you do what you do? I guess I should just say “Gloria Emerson.”
My ninth-grade civics and American history teacher Miss Keister gave me “Show comments / Leave a commentHide comments