The best books about female war correspondents

Vietnam was a big war, as they say, and though it ended almost 50 years ago, its full story has yet to be told. However, many of its pieces lay in the much-overlooked yet incredibly nuanced reporting that women did in the war. 

Elizabeth Becker’s book explores the legacy of three of Vietnam’s unsung journalistic heroes. Each covered the war with a different angle, sense of purpose, and understanding of its—and their—place in geopolitical history. 

Becker’s vivid writing puts you next to photojournalist Catherine Leroy in the plane as she prepares to jump with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the war’s only airborne assault. Readers can almost hear the glasses clinking with ice around the Hotel Continental pool while intellectual Frances Fitzgerald shrewdly plums the unsuspecting diplomatic class for details that she’ll weave into her groundbreaking long-form reporting on the war. And my only heart nearly stopped the minute Kate Webb was captured by the Viet Cong while on assignment for UPI near the Cambodian border. 

Each of these women captured a part of the Vietnam War that no one else did. Yet historians and history readers have largely ignored their unique insights into this consequential conflict. Becker’s book brings their stories to the forefront of discussions of this pivotal era with a band. 

What can I say? I cried more than a few times reading Lindsey Hilsum’s humanizing and deeply personal biography of Marie Colvin. Hilsum’s brilliant portrait paints a figure that burns a little too brightly with life to live long in this world of ours. 

She took her first reporting job with UPI and then transferred to the Sunday Times where she garnered the Sunday Times where she garnered the reputation of the kind of reporter who could get stories that no one else could. She was the first to interview Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and Hilsum’s heart-pounding description put me right in the bunker with her as she nervously clicked on her tape recorder for the interview under the watchful gaze of several armed guards. From there, Colvin covered some of the 1990s' most consequential combat zones, reflecting the chaos that ensued from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Bosnia, Chechnya, and Beirut, she put herself in the line of fire to get the story. 

As is the case with so many combat reporters, she developed PTSD, which she medicated with alcohol. Fuel-injected with an ever greater sense of duty to cover these wars that would have otherwise received little attention in the American press, this vicious cycle led Colvin to be ever more reckless in journalistic practice. In the end, Colvin paid the ultimate price for her pursuit of the truth. While covering civil unrest in Syria, she, along with several other journalists, came under targeted artillery fire by government forces. Several were injured, and Colvin, along with a French photojournalist, were killed. 

Hilsum’s biography not only details an extraordinary and ultimately poignantly tragic life but also the post-Cold War evolution of geopolitics as seen through the eyes of one of the era’s most brilliant reporters.

Whenever I give a talk about Dickey Chapelle, I’m always asked why she did it. Why did she risk her life for so many years to cover conflict? I, too, wondered this same thing when I started writing about her, and in truth, I didn’t have a clue. 

I began to turn to accounts by other women photojournalists for insight, and I found a great deal in this book. Like Chapelle, Addario has an incredible capacity to connect with those she photographs. There is a palpable sense of empathy in her work—and one that is not easily come by. 

From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Pakistan, Addario put herself in harm's way to capture the story—and she brought me as a reader right along with her. Through her lens, I was better able to see the geopolitical forces that shape individuals' lives, the stakes they face, and their bravery in confronting them every day. 

And, like Chapelle, Addario paid the price for her drive to be as close to the story as possible when, in 2011, she was captured by pro-Qaddafi forces in Libya. Held captive for several days, she didn’t know if she would survive. With vivid detail, she describes the resilience and camaraderie that helped her and her fellow captors endure the ordeal, as well as the psychological toll it took on all of them. 

Like Chapelle, it is the people whom she covers that draw Addario back to her camera again and again. It is an overwhelming need to shine a light on the whole of their stories that made both of them risk everything. 

Pour yourself a double before cracking open Clarissa Ward’s outstanding memoir. A polyglot who seems to have been imbued with very little fear from birth, Ward has an incredible capacity to find the heart of the story, whether it’s in the middle of Moscow or the center of a Bangladeshi river. As a reader, her experiences and prose swept me along as she dove into some of the world’s most consequential combat zones. 

But wrapped in this non-stop adrenaline rush is a rare account of the cost of this kind of life on reporters. More than any of the other books on this list, Ward explores the toll born by combat journalists. With heartrending detail, she delves into the death of so many friends and colleagues who made up her world that seemed to crumble a little more with each of their passings. Equally moving are her nuanced descriptions of those who are caught in the crossfire of the conflicts she covered with empathy and rare expertise. 

Nor did she escape unscathed. Like so many combat reporters, Ward suffered from symptoms like those of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Her role as an objective observer made these circumstances that much harder to accept. As she wrote in her book, “The reality is we are not there to solve the problem; we are there to illuminate it.” 

Like Ward, Chapelle struggled with this dilemma of being so close to so much suffering yet being unable to mitigate those who were harmed. And, the two women consoled themselves in the hope that their reporting would be that balm. As Ward writes, “I told myself that if just ten people saw my story and felt moved to care about Syria, then it was worth it.”

I am certainly counted among those who were moved, though based on Ward’s impeccable reporting, I am sure there are more than ten of us. 

As a kid, I wanted to be Lauren Bacall when I grew up. I watched To Have and Have Not almost weekly, emulating her sultry moves as “Slim” and wishing that I too could one day undermine the Nazis in a little black dress.  

I don’t regret my choice of teenage role model, but I do wish I had known about Lee Miller back then, who would have offered a real-life example of a femme fatale fighting for good with her talents. However, rather than grit and charm, Miller used her camera to expose the true cost of fascism. 

Carolyn Burke's biography takes us on an extraordinary journey through Miller’s life—from her days as a model to her work as a war correspondent. Miller had an uncanny ability to connect with the subjects of her photographs, creating a bridge between their world and ours.

During World War II, Miller’s work was groundbreaking. She was one of the few female war correspondents, and she took her role seriously, often putting herself in danger to get the story. Present at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, Miller’s photographs are hauntingly powerful, conveying the unparalleled atrocity of the Nazi genocidal campaign against Jews as well as the deep scars left on her by the horrors she witnessed.

This is not just a biography; it’s a testament to the indomitable spirit of a woman who defied conventions and broke barriers. Through Burke’s meticulous research and evocative storytelling, we come to understand what drew Miller to the heart of the conflict, time and time again.