Live from the Battlefield

by Peter Arnett

Peter Arnett is an international correspondent for CNN. In this book he shares his experiences of more than 35 years inside the world's war zones. He has reported from Bangkok, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Gulf. Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War and has also received the George Polk Memorial Award and the President's Award for lifetime achievement from the Overseas Club.

Genres: Journalism, Nonfiction, War, Memoir, History, Military Fiction, Military History

463 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1993

About the author

Peter Gregg Arnett, ONZM (1934–2025) was a New Zealand-American journalist. Arnett worked for National Geographic magazine, and later for various television networks, most notably CNN. He was well known for his coverage of war, including the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. He was awarded the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his work in Vietnam, where he was present from 1962 to 1975, most of the time reporting for the Associated Press news agency. In 1994, Arnett wrote Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World's War Zones. In March 1997, Arnett was able to interview Osama bin Laden. The Journalism School at the Southern Institute of Technology is named after him.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time hasn't faded this books great writing. It is a very interesting and well written account of conflict from a different view than we are used to. Usually you get the government line, or what 15second sound bite fit into that day's news depending on the personal beliefs of the network owner. But this is a view from someone who is there watching history unfold without interfering. It's a great story too of the lengths that reporters have to go to get to the story and to get it out of the country.

Much is said about network owned news services inability to get a story right or the way they gloss over a story, especially in this day and age of 24 hour media churn. Peter Arnett has documented what we usually didn't get to see or hear. And he usually went to great personal lengths to get it. I wish news agencies could allow these real reporters freedom to tell us the news in their words, with however many words it takes to tell the story, and be able to do follow ups to expand on stories where conditions (politics of the day, network restrictions, combatants etc) have meant the beginning of the story was not compete. Well done Peter I wish I had been a little bit younger to watch you in action.

[Marwan Asmar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Arnett lives it all, a war corespondent that allows you to experience it all from a reporter's point of view, in going to the field, covering the news, writing up the dispatch and sending to the news offices in New York. Its a journey to understand

[severyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reportage rather than autobiography; Arnett reveals little of himself or his life, but a lot of war reporting anecdotes, mostly from the Vietnam War, and I think there are better books on that.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of war anecdotes. Good for those who love field journalism.

[Budge Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a provenance to this book – I bought a copy mid-2025 with the Israeli censorship of the Gaza genocide prominent in my mind. I remember, from my teenage years of protest, Arnett’s reporting from Vietnam. I wondered how journalists might report the atrocities being committed by the IDF if they weren’t actually barred from observing events. I wondered at Trump’s refusal (or inability) to answer questions.
I read bits of Arnett’s book. Then, in December 2025, Arnett died, and I felt the reading of the book needed a tad more respect than casually dipping in to it.
Arnett was a New Zealander, he started working for local papers, moved to Australia, moved on. He arrived in Vietnam – and maybe found a place in destiny - in 1962. Covering the war put him onto a fast learning curve – as he phrased it, forget being brave, save your ass, focus on getting your story back.
The meat of the book is his Vietnam years. He doesn’t ignore the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll adventure – if you escaped the front line there was plenty of that … the problem, of course, being nobody could be certain where the front line might be in the next 24 hours.
The political chaos comes across loud and clear. The formal American argument? They were fighting for democracy and confronting Communism, if they let the Viet Cong win the domino effect would take out the whole of the region.
And the politicians lied, and the generals lied, and the politicians pursued their own self-interests, and the general pursued their own self-interests, and there were a lot of people looking for personal profit and advancement … and waving flags and waiving any question of concern for the truth while weaving lies into some threadbare pretence at patriotism.
And there were a lot of journalists and photographers, male and female, determined to tell the truth, ask questions, hold the politicians and generals (Vietnamese and American) to account.
And Arnett saw the horrors. A Buddhist monk sat down in the road in front of him and immolated himself. Arnett slept in the front line of battle with American dead piled around him. He fought with the generals and politicians – they were a tad more tactful than now, they didn’t constantly complain that the press sent back ‘fake news’, they simply tried to censor the flow of information, cut off the stories at source. Journalists and photographers had to find ways to smuggle their stories out.
And the provenance comes back to haunt me. As I respectfully sat back to read another couple of chapters each night, Trump launched his assault on Iran, hailed his co-conspirator, Netanyahu, as a hero in the illegal war and railed against Europeans who failed to support him.
It left me wondering at the complicity of today’s media, at the failure to challenge tyrants like Trump and war criminals like Netanyahu, at the global collaboration in silence.
What Arnett’s book shouts out to those not so deaf they won’t listen is that journalism and the news media are vitally important elements in democracy. They must not be silenced by tyrants. We can’t allow them to become the mouthpieces of the rich and powerful. They must not be bought and used by those complicit in tyranny. They must be organs which challenge and question and demand answers to the questions which otherwise wouldn’t be asked let alone answered.
Arnett had a life after Vietnam. He covered other conflicts and other issues … but it’s Vietnam which will stick in my memory. Reading his words about that conflict is still electrifying, still makes me sit back. If you’re interested in journalism – real journalism, not self-promotion or celebrity selling – if you’re interested, read and absorb this one. Get angry, get curious, get honest, stay human.

[Willibrordus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sudut pandang wartawan selalu menarik untuk diselami. Mereka berpegang kepada kode etik dan juga upaya pencarian akan kebenaran. Dalam perjalanan mencari, mereka menemukan beragam hal yang mengubah kehidupan pribadinya. Dari kacamatanya, Peter Arnett mewartakan keadaan tempat dia hidup sebagai seorang manusia yang berasal dari Selandia Baru dan bekerja untuk industri media yang dominan dari Amerika Serikat, mulai dari Perang Vietnam hingga Perang Teluk.

Jika mencari tips menjadi wartawan, buku ini tidak secara terbuka mengatakannya. Anda perlu membaca keseluruhan kisah Arnett untuk mendapatkan pengetahuan tersebut.
Sangat disarankan untuk dibaca perlahan, anda tidak perlu mengikuti saya yang membacanya dengan impulsif sehingga menyelesaikan 400 halaman dalam semalam.

[Bill Lindenfelser · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a surprise. This memoir never lags, probably because the life described never lags. There's a close sense of life in the middle of the great danger of a shooting war. The section on Vietnam is the longest and most gripping, but the final piece, on Afghanistan, is also filled with a sense of the danger of a chaotic situation in a chaotic part of the world. Highly recommended.

[سلمان · Rating 4 out of 5]

المذكرات بشكل عام ممتعة، ترجع بنا إلى ألغاز نبحث عن حل لها.

[Lê Thành · Rating 4 out of 5]

Đọc bản dịch tiếng Việt của quyển sách này. Đây không phải là cái nhìn toàn cục về cuộc chiến Việt Nam mà chỉ là trải nghiệm của chính bản thân tác giả và một số đồng nghiệp.

[Quân Khuê · Rating 3 out of 5]

Từ chiến trường khốc liệt của Peter Arnett, phóng viên chiến trường người Mỹ gốc New Zealand, bản dịch tiếng Việt của Phạm Hoàng Chung. Bản gốc tiếng Anh hình như dài hơn, bản tiếng Việt chỉ dịch những phần liên quan đến Việt Nam và Iraq. Đọc để thấy cuộc sống của những phóng viên chiến trường như thế nào, trong nhiều trường hợp họ dũng cảm còn hơn những người lính trực tiếp chiến đấu. Lính thì có thế bỉ đẩy ra chiến trường còn phóng viên tự nguyện lao đầu vào chốn hiểm nguy. Đọc cũng để thấy ở đâu cũng có tầng tầng lớp gatekeeper, không phải chỉ ở Việt Nam mới có "lề bên phải". Bản dịch có vẻ như có nhiều lỗi, nhiều câu tiếng Việt không thể hiểu được. Dịch giả hình như là học trò của Peter Arnett trong một khóa học báo chí.

[Brian Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

LIVE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD: FROM VIETNAM TO BAGDAD, 35 YEARS IN THE WORLD’S WAR ZONES is an extraordinary work by an extraordinary journalist who made a career of pushing the boundaries of American journalism. This is one of those can’t-put-it-down reads.