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From award-winning journalist Jane Ferguson, an unflinching memoir of ambition and war?from the Troubles to the fall of Kabul.In Northern Ireland in the 1980s and '90s, war was a secret, and young Jane Ferguson wanted to know the truth. For her, war was called the Troubles, bomb threats and military checkpoints on the way to school were commonplace, and an uncle's gunshot wound in IRA crossfire was disguised as a cow kick. Jane developed a penchant for asking questions that cut through this culture of silence, while the unspoken tension in her village exploded into abuse and rage at home. An opportunity to study Arabic in Yemen after college came as a great relief, a ticket to a different, adventurous life?and to the very center of the story.
Ferguson has since reported from nearly every war front around the globe?from Yemen and Syria during the Arab Spring, Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul, and Ukraine during Russia's 2022 invasion?but her rise to the highest ranks of journalism has been anything but ordinary. As a scrappy one-woman reporting team, a borrowed camera her only equipment, networks often told her she simply had the wrong accent, even the wrong appearance. Still, her ambition to build a life in journalism on her own terms thrust her into harm's way time and again. While other reporters chased ?bang bang shoot 'em up? stories, a different set of questions guided Ferguson's work, ones that gave faces and names to the people experiencing these conflicts. In the face of grave violence and suffering, giving voice to civilian lives seemed a small act of justice, no matter the risks.
For fans of Samantha Power, Marie Colvin, and Ariel Levy, Ferguson's bold debut chronicles her unlikely journey from bright, inquisitive child to intrepid war correspondent from the front lines of the most dangerous conflicts and dire humanitarian crises of our time. With an open-hearted humanity we rarely see in conflict stories,
No Ordinary Assignment shows what it means to build an authentic career against the odds.
A propos de l'auteur
Jane Ferguson is a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour. Her reporting has won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, the George Polk Award, and the Aurora Humanitarian Journalism Award, among others. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker, she lives in New York City.
Résumé
"A haunting memoir of disarming honesty. . . a remarkable testament to the anguish and the beauty of foreign correspondence.”—Roger Cohen, New York Times Paris bureau chief and author of An Affirming Flame
From award-winning journalist Jane Ferguson, an unflinching memoir of ambition and war—from The Troubles to the fall of Kabul.
Jane Ferguson has covered nearly every war front and humanitarian crisis of our time. She reported from Yemen as protests grew into the Arab Spring; she secured rare access to rebel-held Syria, where foreign journalists were banned, to cover its civil war. When the Taliban claimed Kabul in 2021, she was one of the last Western journalists to remain at the airport as thousands of Afghans, including some of her colleagues, struggled to evacuate.
Living with sectarian violence was nothing new to Ferguson. As a child in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and ‘90s, The Troubles meant bomb threats and military checkpoints on the way to school were commonplace. Books by Dervla Murphy and Martha Gellhorn offered solace from her turbulent family, and an opportunity to study Arabic in Yemen came as a relief—and a ticket to the life in journalism she imagined.
Without family wealth or connections, she began as a scrappy one-woman reporting team, a borrowed camera often her only equipment. Networks told her she had the wrong accent, the wrong appearance, not enough “bang-bang shoot-‘em-up.” Still, Ferguson threw herself into harm’s way time and again, determined to give voice to civilian experiences of war. In the face of grave violence and suffering, this seemed a small act of justice, no matter the risks.
Ferguson’s bold debut chronicles her unlikely journey from bright, inquisitive child to intrepid war correspondent. With an open-hearted humanity we rarely see in conflict stories, No Ordinary Assignment shows what it means to build an authentic career against the odds.
