The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny

A swashbuckling Texan, a teller of tall tales, a ladies' man, and a renegade, Fred Cuny spent his life in countries rent by war, famine, and earthquake, saving many thousands of lives with his innovative and often controversial methods of relief work. Cuny earned the nickname Master of Disaster for his exploits in Kurdistan, Somalia, and Bosnia. But when he arrived in the rogue Russian republic of Chechnya in the spring of 1995, raring to go and eager to put his ample funds from George Soros to good use, he found himself in the midst of an unimaginably savage war of independence unlike any he had ever before encountered. Shortly thereafter, he vanished into the warrocked highlands never to be seen again.Who was Cuny really working for? Was he a CIA spy? Who killed him, and why? Determined to answer these questions, veteran war reporter Scott Anderson headed to Chechnya on a hazardous journey that started as a magazine assignment and ended as a personal mission. At great risk to his own life, Anderson traveled through the region in search of solutions to the enigmas of Fred Cuny's life and death. The result is an extraordinary narrative of the chilling reality that is the new world order, and a tour de force of literary journalism.…