I Lost My Love in Baghdad

A Modern War Story

By: Michael Hastings

Narrated by: Michael Hastings

At age 25, Michael Hastings arrived in Baghdad to cover the war in Iraq for Newsweek. He had at his disposal a little Hemingway romanticism and all the apparatus of a 21st-century reporter: cell phones, high-speed Internet access, digital video cameras, fixers, drivers, guards, and translators. In startling detail, he describes the chaos, the violence, the never-ending threats of bomb and mortar attacks, and the front lines that can be a half mile from the Green Zone - indeed, that can be anywhere.

This is a new kind of war: private security companies follow their own rules, or lack thereof; soldiers in combat get instant messages from their girlfriends and families; and members of the Louisiana National Guard watch Katrina's decimation of their city on a TV in the barracks.

Back in New York, Hastings had fallen in love with Andi Parhamovich, a young idealist who worked for Air America. A year into their courtship, Andi followed Michael to Iraq, taking a job with the National Democratic Institute. Their war-zone romance is another window into life in Baghdad. They call each other pet names; they make plans for the future; they fight, usually because each is fearful for the other's safety; and they try to figure out how to get together when it means putting bodyguards and drivers in jeopardy. Then Andi goes on a dangerous mission for her new employer - a meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters that ends in catastrophe.

Searing, unflinching, and revelatory, I Lost My Love in Baghdad is both a raw, brave, brilliantly observed account of the war and a heartbreaking story of one life lost to it.

©2008 Michael Hastings (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Love and war always make for a potent brew, and in Michael Hastings' new book they infuse the horror in Iraq with an immediacy and a poignant sense of loss that are light-years away from the numbingly remote headlines we've been reading." (Craig Unger, author of House of Bush)

Brutal

I can’t even imagine what this was like for him but you can hear it in his voice during the last chapter as he describes what he imagined she saw as her life flashed before her eyes. What a tragedy for us all.

I’ve ready this book a lot since I was a kid still very good rip me Hastings

This is a good fist book and I wish we could have seen more books from him I’ve enjoyed this book, the operators and the last magazine which would be a much better book if he’d been able to finish it which it seems he never was able too but still a great book what a experience although it does seem like they where really testing the odds having 2 of ur loved ones in Iraq in 2007 lol but yes this is a great peace of background I think the end I’d very important this is dm isis attach before we knew what isis was so fun fun

Sad story...

The title pretty much tells the story. I found this book tedious, and very poorly narrated. Obviously the author is trying to recover from losing the women he loved, after she was brutally killed in Iraq. The storyline itself is interesting and has some merit, but in my opinion the book would have been greatly improved by a better editor, and another narrator.