A small corner of hell : dispatches from Chechnya /

These books provide excellent eyewitness accounts of a war fought in a place described as "the most dangerous place on earth." As journalistic accounts, they demonstrate their authors' consistent bravery and unswerving commitment to revealing as much truth as possible about a war whose breathtaking brutality is suspected but not well known. The threat of sudden death routinely confronts those who would report on the war. Although the two books differ fundamentally in treatment, they share a sympathy for people caught between the ruthless violence of Russian forces and the grim independence struggle of the Chechen "militants." Politkovskaya, a special correspondent for Novaya gazeta in Moscow, describes the conflict in a series of vignettes that move from the devastated lives of innocent villagers, through the brutality inflicted by rogue police on Chechen students in Moscow, and finally to a dramatic revelation indicating collusion between Russian armed forces and Chechen criminals. She also asserts that the "office-loving" Kofi Annan has avoided challenging Russia about Chechnya in exchange for renewed support of his mandate as UN secretary general. While Politkovskaya offers a general overview of the war, Goltz offers an equally dramatic narrative of a journalist seeking film footage demonstrating the "Chechen spirit." Readers may recall Goltz's excellent account of oil intrigue in Azerbaijan Diary; again, his persistence has given us a precise image of how Chechen irregulars brought a greatly superior fighting force to stalemate. The massive violence of Russian forces against hapless civilians in the city of Samashki confirms the worst violence reported by Politkovskaya. Goltz's personal experience is especially valuable for students of journalism who would report on the world's many local and ferocious wars. Clearly, both books deserve inclusion in all libraries, and if their account of the sheer destruction in Chechnya did not warrant their acquisition, their unrivaled detail and immediacy certainly would.-Zachary T. Irwin, Sch. of Humanities & Social Science, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.