A Woman at War: Storming Kuwait with the U.S. Marines

by Marianne Moore

Overview

A journalist who accompanied a senior commanding general as he led his troops into battle during Desert Storm gives an insider's view of the heroism and tragedy that she witnessed on the front line.

Molly Moore, senior correspondent for The Washington Post, didn’t think she’d be the only US journalist with a close-up view of the Gulf War, but when Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, commander of the US Marine forces, invited her to shadow him while his troops planned and executed the invasion of Kuwait, that’s exactly the situation she found herself in.

The result of this brave journalistic effort is a vivid and dramatic account of the Gulf War—one that does justice to the diligent, gutsy marines that successfully drove Saddam Hussein’s military from the country, without romanticizing the horrors of battle. Tense, chaotic, and thrumming with emotional resonance, Moore’s examination of the invasion offers indispensable insight into the 100-hour invasion that formed the overture to America’s War on Terror.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743237895
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	02/15/2002
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Molly Moore is the author of A Woman at War.

Editorial Reviews

By circumventing the Pentagon's restrictive media-pool system, Moore became the only American reporter to get a sustained close-up view of ground operations throughout the Gulf War. Senior military correspondent for the Washington Post at the time, she had the good fortune to observe the campaign with the cooperation of Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, commander of the Marine expeditionary force, who made her privy to inner-council deliberations and provided access to his troops in the field. The resulting report is by far the most vivid and informative account to date of the 100-hour ground war. Her respect for Boomer and his Marines is evident. She portrays theater commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, however, as a tyrannical blowhard who misled the U.S. public with his press-conference assurances that the Gulf War was perfectly planned, perfectly executed and virtually bloodless. Moore's book contains some of the finest war reporting of the past half-century. She is currently New Delhi bureau chief of the Washington Post. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

For woman or man, soldier or journalist, war is hell; war is hilarious; war is ironic. Washington Post reporter Moore's story is timeless, and her tales of ``storming Kuwait'' with Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, commander of the U.S. Marine forces, and with some of the colonels and privates who served under him are dramatic and all-too-human. If there is a flaw here, it is that the episodes seem almost disconnected and chaotic, like any war viewed from up close. Moore's outrage over the ``spin doctors'' and ``Neanderthals'' in Washington who objected to her and other journalists' high-level access and potential compromise of military planning deserves more deliberate study than the angry afterthought at the end of this book. For popular collections.-- John Yurechko, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal