In Extremis

An inspiring biography of the war reporter killed in Syria in 2012, whose life inspired the feature film A Private War , starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin.   A  New York Times Book Review  Editors' Choice Finalist for the Costa Biography Award Long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Best Book of 2018, Esquire  and  Foreign Policy An Amazon Best Book of November, the  Guardian  Bookshop Book of November, and one of the  Evening Standard 's Books to Read in November When Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost a fearless and iconoclastic war correspondent who covered the most significant global calamities of her lifetime.  In Extremis, written by her fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling investigation into Colvin's epic life and tragic death based on exclusive access to her intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death, interviews with people from every corner of her life, and impeccable research. After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin studied with the legendary journalist John Hersey at Yale, and eventually started working for  The Sunday Times of London, where she gained a reputation for bravery and compassion as she told the stories of victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost sight in one eye while in Sri Lanka covering the civil war, interviewed Gaddafi and Arafat many times, and repeatedly risked her life covering conflicts in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, and the Middle East. Colvin lived her personal life in extremis, too: bold, driven, and complex, she was married twice, took many lovers, drank and smoked, and rejected society's expectations for women. Despite PTSD, she refused to give up reporting. Like her hero Martha Gellhorn, Colvin was committed to bearing witness to the horrifying truths of war, and to shining a light on the profound suffering of ordinary people caught in the midst of conflict. Lindsey Hilsum's  In Extremis is a devastating and revelatory biography of one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation. "Now, thanks to Hilsum's deeply reported and passionately written book, [Marie Colvin] has the full accounting that she deserves." —Joshua Hammer,  The New York Times "A rip-roaring life rendered extremely well." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)