Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda

In the civil war of Sudan, Peterson found the most depressing malaise. More people had died (1.5m) in the Sudanese war than in Bosnia and Somalia combined, as the barren North fought the lush South, Arab arrayed against Christian, with famine snapping at their heels. Life is cheap, but food is dear, especially when aid unfailingly reaches only the mouths of the oppressors. The 1994 Rwandan massacre saw about half, maybe two thirds, of the number of casualties, but the rate of killing was five times greater than even the Nazis managed fifty years before. Extremist Hutus armed themselves with machetes and hacked their way, with Old Testament vengeance, through their Tutsi neighbours and moderate Hutus, while members of the UN Security Council fell over themselves to avoid terming it "genocide". Peterson's anger is palpable, and his eloquent, well-paced analysis, based on innumerable interviews as well as his own experiences, refuses to draw a veil over the horror. Meticulously researched, haunting, and urgent; if journalism is the first draft of history, then Scott Peterson's testimony makes a harrowing yet invaluable contribution. --David Vincent

As a former foreign correspondent (London based, for Australian television) I also spent time in Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan. I picked up this book out of curiosity but without much in the way of expectations.

Having read it, I am stunned and in awe.

There are many more famous and exalted names in foreign journalism than Scott Peterson's - at least until now. The sheer passion of his reporting, the level of his commitment, his fearlessness both when faced by African violence and the equally grotesque rationalisations of those who clumsily intervene (and those who fail to intervene) deserve him a place in the highest rankings.

He stuck with Somalia when most of the rest of the world lost interest (I plead guilty). He took trouble to understand the Somali perspective when most others saw simply an American story. He writes illuminatingly about Sudan - perhaps the world's most overlooked warzone, rich in terrible, pointless loss. His writings of Rwanda add renewed freshness to the gut-churning horrors of the genocide - after Gourevitch's "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Familes" apparently left little more to be said.

Peterson returns the degraded craft of journalism to its purest form: he bears witness. He risks his life to do so. He loses friends. He confesses his fear. He disdains received wisdom. He redeems the lazy journalism of the pampered hacks with one eye on the room service menu and the other on how well their "heroism" will play back home.

Anyone with an interest in Africa, reporting, the nature of the human condition, the politics of humanitarian intervention, or just a damn good, disturbing read about the ways of the world would do well to read this book.