There is a debate over reporting on the war in Iraq: are the media reporting only negative news, and what about the positive things that are going on? Washington Post reporter Jackie Spinner writes about her tours in Iraq, convincingly documenting the deterioration in the quality of life as the war drags on. She reports on the war as a journalist, but with a woman’s intuitive view of events that unfold.

She writes about the danger that journalists face. She was the subject of a frightening kidnapping attempt. She reported from Fallujah during the fierce battle that United States soldiers and marines waged to take the city back from insurgents. She writes of mortar attacks on the Post’s offices, of Iraqi security guards who risked their lives to protect their American charges.

In her pursuit of the story, Spinner spent time on the line with the military. She dressed in Muslim veils to avoid attracting attention while interviewing Iraqi citizens. She used Iraqi translators in her effort to get both sides of the story, and both she and her Iraqi assistants were targets for insurgents in an increasingly vicious war.

Her twin sister, Jenny, is a professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pa. At the end of each chapter, Jenny addresses her concerns, indeed fears, for her twin sister. She relates the fear in Jackie’s voice during phone calls, and her own wishes that Jackie had stayed at home.

The result is a gripping narrative of a journalist’s life in a war where fellow reporters are indeed kidnapped and killed—where videotaped beheadings are a clear and present danger. It is a war where going out to get a story is fraught with danger, but so is staying behind in an office that is likely to be targeted for mortar attacks. It is a war where Iraqi colleagues face even greater dangers should the insurgents find they are working for the American media.

Yet, with all the danger, with all the death and destruction that took place around her, Spinner never loses that essential part of a person: her humanity and concern for fellow beings. She does not reveal the full names of Iraqi colleagues to protect them from reprisals. She grieves when a young Iraqi woman leaves the Post. She writes with understanding about prejudices of American soldiers and marines toward Iraqis.

Vignettes that most of us would find alarming unfold: falling asleep in a Humvee as GI’s fire a .50 caliber machine gun at insurgent forces, the spent shells falling at her feet; finding herself numb to fear in Fallujah as the battle raged; and fighting off kidnappers until Marines could rescue her.

Given an opportunity to forego her service when violence toward reporters escalated, she elected instead to go back to Baghdad after returning home for a short sabbatical. She wrestled with the issues that compel journalists to cover wars: the sense of duty to report what is happening, the commitment to getting the story, the obligation to get it right. While Americans honor the commitment of soldiers to die for their country, the commitment of journalists who sometimes die in pursuit of the story is often discounted.

Her reports from the war zone were subjected to being second guessed on internet blogs. She was accused of filing reports from the safety of a hotel, when the reality was that she felt safer embedded with the American military in war-torn Fallujah than in a Baghdad hotel.

Male war correspondents rarely write about their feelings, about their fears and the sense of horror they feel in war. Spinner opens her soul to the world, at the very same time telling how, in pursuit of a story, she put her fears and personal feelings aside. She writes convincingly about the dangers and challenges that Iraqi citizens face, and how living in Saddam’s Iraq has colored their perceptions.

After the kidnapping attempt that took place outside the gates of Abu Ghraib Prison, Spinner implored an Iraqi colleague to “tell them I didn’t cry” when they returned to the Post’s Baghdad Bureau. She went to Iraq as a junior reporter, but she returned a seasoned war correspondent. The question comes to mind: would it have made a difference if she had cried? Would it have mattered if she had succumbed to fear and stayed home instead of returning to the war?

Spinner does not answer for us the questions her book raises: what value is there to the reporting of war correspondents? what do we gain in learning from first-hand reporting about a nation gone mad with death and destruction...about horrors that we Americans rarely encounter?

She does not judge the war. She simply reports it. She does not moralize, despite deep-seated religious convictions. She does tell us about her own reaction to events that unfold in the madness that Iraq has become, about her own moral concepts as they apply to dealing with colleagues, military, and civilians. She puts us in the middle of her Iraq experiences, vividly describing not just events, but how those events make a person feel.

Tell Them I Didn’t Cry is compelling reading. It is difficult to put the book down, easy to feel drawn into the mad world that Spinner encountered during her tour.