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Central America in the Crosshairs of War

Central America in the Crosshairs of War

On the Road from Vietnam to Iraq

Imprint: George F Thompson Publishing

192 Pages, 11 x 9.5 in, 100 photographs by the author (57 color; 43 black-and-white), 3 historic photographs (1 color; 2 black-and-white), 5 color montages, 3 documents (2 color; 1 black-and-white), and 1 color map

Hardcover
9781960521019
November 2024
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$40.00

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An unforgettable account of how misguided and illegal U.S. policies in Central America during the 1980s resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, created many of today’s problems along America’s Southern Border, and helped perpetuate a legacy of hawkish militarism at the expense of democracy and diplomacy.

During the 1980s, the United States financed and directed wars against popular movements in Central America. Vowing to block “Soviet expansion,” the U.S. waged a Vietnam-style counterinsurgency in El Salvador while orchestrating a covert and illegal war to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Some 75,000 died in El Salvador, and more than 30,000 were killed in Nicaragua, most of them civilians. Countless more were displaced. Meanwhile, with tacit U.S. support, the Guatemalan military razed hundreds of Indigenous communities and killed more than 200,000 people during a civil war that claimed the lives of 100,000 Mayan villagers.

Scott Wallace arrived in Central America in 1983 to cover these conflicts as a freelance “stringer” for CBS News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as well as Newsweek, The Independent, and The Guardian. Traveling along the frontlines of war, Wallace evolved a distinctive reporting style that included photojournalistic portraits of startling intimacy, page-turning tales of high adventure, and incisive analysis of the events he witnessed. The result is this unforgettable account of a reporter coming of age on the battlefield as he seeks the truth amid a landscape rife with death and deception.

Introduced by the Honorable Christopher J. Dodd, readers will find within these pages a compelling and eye-opening narrative and visual record of the conflicts that continue to reverberate in the crisis on America’s southern border with Mexico and in policy decisions made in Washington that impact families at home and throughout the world. Situating the exercise of U.S. power on a continuum running from Vietnam through Central America to Iraq, where he later reported, Wallace provides a rare look into the real-life consequences of morally dubious policies while offering a gripping primer for aspiring foreign correspondents and field reporters.

In Central America in the Crosshairs of War, Scott Wallace presents a compelling memoir that not only reboots America’s history of misadventures overseas since Vietnam, but also restores faith in the importance and power of journalism at a time when “disinformation” and “alternate realities” abound in America and abroad. As Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Debrorah Nelson observers: “Scott Wallace takes us along his harrowing journey into the Central American jungles for an important historical accounting that draws a sharp line from the U.S. proxy wars of the 1980s to today’s crises in those countries and at our own southern border.”

Scott Wallace, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, is the author of the best-selling book, The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes (Crown, 2011), and a longtime contributor to National Geographic. He covered the armed conflicts in Central America throughout the 1980s for CBS News, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Independent, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—experiences that form the basis for Central America in the Crosshairs of War. His articles have also appeared in Harper’s, Interview, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among many others. His photographs have been published in National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and throughout the world via Getty Images. His broadcast credits include CBS, CNN, Fox News, and National Geographic Channel. He has been honored with the Explorers Club’s Lowell Thomas Award for excellence in reporting from the field, the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, the Ochberg Fellowship from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University, and a Humanities Fellowship at the University of Connecticut.

Christopher J. Dodd, J.D., from 1966 to 1968 was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic and from 1969 to 1975 served in the U.S. Army Reserve. He then became Connecticut's longest-serving member of Congress, first as a member of the House of Representatives from 1975 to 1981 and then the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 2011. Upon retirement from the U.S. Senate, Senator Dodd became Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, and, in 2018, he joined the law firm of Arnold & Porter as a Senior Counsel. Senator Dodd also served as Special Advisor on the Americas to President Joseph R. Biden.

“For anyone seeking to comprehend how the United States lurched heedlessly from its disastrous war in Vietnam on to those in Iraq and Afghanistan, Central America in the Crosshairs of War is a must-read. One of the most intrepid and clear-eyed reporters to have covered the wars in Central America of the 1980s, Scott Wallace has produced an essential book, in words and pictures, offering an invaluable historical perspective.” ~Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Fall of Baghdad and Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“Scott Wallace intensively documented the U.S.-supported wars that wracked Central America during the 1980s, and he deftly links them to the American ‘war on terror’ after 9/11. Writing with great lucidity and grace, Wallace also illustrates Central America in the Crosshairs of War with his stunning photographs. A very compelling read.” ~Peter Bergen, Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University, National Security Analysist for CNN, and author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden and The Longest War

“Scott Wallace’s book is fantastic. Vivid, immediate, gripping, and frequently hair-raising, his grounds-eye account of the cruel wars that the U.S. has inflicted and enabled on hapless victims far and near evokes history as it happened. Wallace’s reporting, intensely detailed and personal, memorializes people and the world in which they lived and died in a way no reader can ever forget.” ~Andrew Cockburn, Washington Editor of Harper’s Magazine and author of The Spoils of War and Kill Chain

“Scott Wallace takes us along on his harrowing journey into the Central American jungles for an important historical accounting that draws a sharp line from the U.S. proxy wars of the 1980s to today’s crises in those countries and at our own southern border.” ~Deborah Nelson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Professor of Investigative Reporting at the University of Maryland