미국 CNN의 앵커이자 전쟁/재난 전문 취재기자로 유명한 앤더슨 쿠퍼의 일대기. 그는 동남아시아의 쓰나미, 니제르, 이라크, 카트리나로 피해를 입은 뉴올리언즈 등 전쟁/재난 현장만을 전문적으로 찾아다니며 약자들의 입장을 대변하는 저널리스트로 활동해 왔으며, 현재는 CNN에서 [Anderson Cooper 360°]라는 시사 프로그램을 진행하고 있다. 

미국의 재벌3세로서 부유한 환경에서 성장했으나 안락한 삶을 버리고 도전적이고 진취적인 삶을 살아가고 있어 미국인들에게 더욱 관심을 끌고 있는 쿠퍼. 그는 이 책에서 재난 현장 취재기 뿐만 아니라 그를 재난 현장으로 뛰어들게 했던 비극적인 가족사에 관해서도 쓰고 있어, 개인적인 고통을 사회적인 역할로 풀어내려 했던 고뇌를 엿볼 수 있다. 

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life. 

After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother. As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him. 

But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family's troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale. Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before -- ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarejevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda -- but he had never seen human misery quite like this. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth. 

Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters.