ME AGAINST MY BROTHER

The appalling tragedies of Somalia, the Sudan, and Rwanda during the 1990s told with breath-stealing intensity by war

correspondent Peterson (Wall Street Journal). Peterson's hope in these pages is that by vividly detailing his experiences as a journalist with both the military and political forces at play in these African countries, he might twist readers' sensibilities just enough to make them react the next time a place is visited by those four old familiars: war, famine, pestilence, and death. In writing as agile and alert as a ranger in a combat zone, Peterson takes the story into the extremes, where war crimes are standard fare and everyone from locals to foreign interventionists to church and relief officials can display a savage wickedness (though he is fast to note that there are angels, too, if hardly thick on the ground). Peterson cannily and quite judgmentally serves forth the grotesque consequences of an inept US foreign policy, showing how neglect on the part of the international community inspired overreaction or simple abandonment on the part of the US—as in Rwanda. There are also the unedifying examples of the humanitarian missions that began to choose sides, and the chronic rhythms of religious conflict. And the generally antagonistic relationship between the military and the correspondents, which colonizes the book like a disease, only adds to the atmosphere of every-man-for-himself-and-God-against-all. Rising like the dead from the narrative are a scattering of rude truths and more grim encounters than can be taken in, including those moments that correspondents always keep a lookout for: "The mob surrounded me and a machete smashed into my head." Just as Peterson intends, these exposures to war in Africa "tear at your heart, and make you angry, very angry." (16-page

color insert, not seen)