More Thrills Than Skills: Adventures in Journalism, War & Terrorism [Paperback]

Paul Harris's superb book, "More Thrills than Skills: Adventures in Journalism, War, and Terrorism," takes its place among the many other excellent books written by frontline journalists about their professional and personal experiences. I can think of no other volume in the genre, however, that so vividly conveys the singularly haphazard and insecure but remarkable life of the freelance war correspondent. Moreover, the book is refreshingly honest about the emotional and financial ups and downs of the profession and the often bittersweet personal relationships which flourish and fade rapidly in the strained social contexts of war zones.
The book is remarkably current in terms of its political information. Harris's work in Sri Lanka provides pertinent background for the events now happening in that island nation. Similarly, his work in Bosnia and Croatia supplies illuminating background that you'll wish you'd had a few years ago when the Balkans exploded (see also Harris's volume "Cry Bosnia" of 1996). Albania is a country very little known in the U.S., or Britain, for that matter, but it's just recently become NATO's latest member and thus knowledge of that previously isolated nation has become more relevant to Europe and the West. Harris is one of the few people able to deliver expertise on the history and recent political and social realities of that nation. The same is true for the hot zones of Pakistan on the borders with Afghanistan and India, where, in one part of the book, Harris gives an eye-opening account of the gun manufacturing cottage industries of the region. Elsewhere, you'll read things about Osama bin Laden and Al- Qaeda that you've never heard before, and you'll wonder why you hadn't.
Harris's book is both a war correspondent's diary--filled with the moments of tension, wonder, and danger that one might expect from many years in the world's tragic war zones--and a hugely entertaining autobiography of a man who has lived an extraordinary life during which he has doggedly refused to settle for the mundane routines that govern most of our workaday lives. An intimation of this rebellious character-to-be comes from Harris's account of his writing of a now classic book on pirate radio ships ("When Pirates Ruled the Waves," 1969, recently reissued), which he published at the tender age of 17. From shattered Sarajevo at the depth of its war-torn disintegration and despair to sampling caviar with the super-rich aboard an ultra-luxury cruise ship as a guest lecturer, Harris turns his ironic, humorous, and perceptive eye on a world which he consistently observes with disquieting accuracy. Every page turns up some new wonder, whether it is being informed by British security that an order for his assassination has been put out by Tamil terrorists, or in revelations about the aggravations of trying to help run an English language newspaper in Shanghai. One of the most dramatic moments of the book is the section recounting Harris's harrowing brush with death complements of an exotic infection from flies that had gestated in the decaying bodies of 32 women whose bodies had been flung down a well, months before the fateful bites, by Serb paramilitaries in Bosnia. It is the frontline journalist, as much as the soldier, who bears witness to our age's tragedies, and Harris has clearly never shied away from the muddy and bloody trenches of his vocation.
Harris can write lovingly about his favorite homes-away-from-home, including cruise ships and his best-loved quirky hotels in the far-flung reaches of the planet such as the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. There's a bit of the colonialist about Harris, ever in search of cold beer or scotch in the most unlikely venues, but that makes him even more James-Bondish, in a way: sometimes shaken, sometimes stirred by the paucity of fortifying drinks (note his choice for the book's cover picture). Nostalgia for the Empire...and a girl in every port of call, it seems. Apologies to the political correctness lobby. The book's greatest strength, among many, however, are in the instances where the author gives accounts of the ways in which everyday peoples' lives are rent by the corrupt, gun-toting thugs of the world, and where the liberties we take for granted are but a dream for the ordinary citizens tragically caught in conflict zones where those with the most weaponry rule the streets and neighborhoods. Westerners, so often poorly informed about some of the world's more volatile regions, would do well to acquaint themselves more thoroughly with these distant dystopias, and Harris's book is a good place to begin. -Allan Langdale.

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