"In 2012, Jonathan Littell went to the heart of the Syrian conflict, embedding himself with the Free Syria-Army in the historic city of Homs. He watched from the front line as the city was ruthlessly pummeled by Assad's forces before it finally surrendered. His urgent notebooks of what he saw on the ground speak directly of the horrors of the civil war that continues today. Out of the chaos, Littell bears witness to the lives and the hopes of freedom fighters. Syrian Notebooks is the most close-up account of the war, and will be seen as a classic account of war reportage"--

From Kindertransport survivor to pioneering Foreign Correspondent at the Guardian - the extraordinary life of Hella Pick. A trailblazer for women in journalism, Hella Pick arrived in Britain in 1939 as a child refugee from Austria. Over nearly four decades she covered the volatile global scene, first in West Africa, followed by America and long periods in Europe. In her thirty-five years with the Guardian she reported on the end of Empire in West Africa, the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King's march from Selma to Montgomery, the Vietnam peace negotiation in Paris, the 1968 student revolt in France, the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the closing stages of the Cold War. A request for coffee on board a Soviet ship anchored in Malta led to a chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. A request for an interview with Willy Brandt led to a personal friendship that enabled her to come to terms with Germany's Nazi past. Her book is also a clarion call for preserving professionalism in journalism at a time when social media muddy the waters between fact and fiction, and between reporting and commentary. Invisible Walls tells the dramatic story of how a Kindertransport survivor won the trust and sometimes the friendship of world leaders, and with them a wide range of remarkable men and women. It speaks frankly of personal heartache and of a struggle over her Jewish identity. It is also the intensely touching story of how, despite a gift for friendship and international recognised achievements as a woman journalist, a continuing sense of personal insecurity has confronted her with a series of invisible walls.

The author describes her youth in Brooklyn, her education at the University of Cologne on the eve of Hitler's reign of terror, and her trips to the Soviet Union during Stalin's dictatorship

Inside of Time is a book for everyone eager to read about the personal and human side of our stirring times. The vivid recollections of a trailblazing eyewitness to history, combined with stories of Gruber's intimate friendships with luminaries of the century, has created a book to cherish. In the Roosevelt administration and as a foreign correspondent with the New York Herald Tribune, Gruber worked with, wrote about, and was mentored by a cast that included Harold Ickes, FDR's Secretary of the Interior, who in 1941 appointed Gruber as his personal representative to Alaska; Helen Rogers Reid, Herald Tribune publisher and Gruber's boss, who scheduled her to speak at lecture forums where Gruber shared the podium with Churchill and DeGaulle; Golda Meir, with whom she swapped kitchen table confidences about their families; David Ben-Gurion, whose prophetic voice made him the most inspiring leader Gruber ever knew; and Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Gruber shepherded to Israel in the early 1950s. Spanning 1941–1955, Gruber also recalls the fierce anti-Semitism she overcame in Congress, the DP camps she saw in Germany after WWII, and traveling with the Israeli army during the War for Independence. Sixteen pages of photographs add to this enthralling autobiography by one of America's best journalists.

s/t: A foreign correspondent's life behind the lines An account of Edward Behr's time in China and South East Asia during the 60s and 70s.

Filmmaker Eva Orner takes us on a personal, gripping and compelling journey to show us how she came to make her documentary about Australia's asylum seeker policies. ' My work as a filmmaker has taken me to some wild, dangerous places ... It's been a crazy, nomadic kind of life, taking me to conflict zones and desperately poor, chaotic, unstable countries. I've been sick, injured, scared and had too many close calls to mention. I spend a lot of time alone, in airports, lugging camera gear, gazing up at flickering departure boards.' But I love it. I love the feeling I get when I am heading into the unknown.' Angry and frustrated with Australia's asylum seeker and refugee policies, Eva Orner, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker, returned home after a decade living in the States to make the documentary Chasing Asylum about the issue. Embarking on a tumultuous eighteen months, Eva travelled to Indonesia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran, spending time with and filming asylum seekers, as well as interviewing politicians, activists and commentators including David Marr and Malcolm Fraser. She smuggled a pen camera into an Indonesian jail to interview a convicted people smuggler, she talked to whistle blowers in Australia, and in Iran she met with the family of the man killed in the Manus Island riot. Chasing Asylum is a compelling insight into a filmmaker's journey, and a very personal story of the cost, risks and rewards of putting yourself on the line for a film and for a cause. The Guardian writes of the film Chasing Asylum: 'The full, muscular weight of the feature documentary format has finally tackled the subject with Chasing Asylum, a viscerally intense expose given gravitas by Academy and Emmy award-winning film-maker Eva Orner ... not just successful, but awfully and unforgettably effective: vital, evocative and gut-wrenching.' 'Eva Orner is no stranger to bravery ... she manifests this steadfastness in relating story after story where pain, violence and horror frame her narrative, interspersed by accounts of the daily life of a filmmaker ... Orner is brave not just emotionally, but also physically, risking imprisonment, illness and violence to uncover the stories of those who have sought refuge ... It is a story that must be told.' Sydney Morning Herald