The war correspondent trails clouds of glory. The names of the pioneers of the trade are stardust: Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Dumas, Henry Villard, Winston Churchill, Stephen Crane, John Reed, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Harding Davis, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Jack London, George Orwell, Philip Gibbs, Luigi Barzini.

The names from World War I, Korea, and Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Kosovo are likewise as redolent of adventure and derring-do, with photojournalists and radio and television commentators crowding the pantheon.

They are the eyes of history. b War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict from The Crimea to Iraq tells their stories, from the very first reports from the Crimean War in 1853 to the Second Gulf War in 2003.

Through the notebooks, photographs, headlines, wires, telegrams, and satellite uplinks, Harold Evans describes the times in which these uniquely dedicated men and women worked, and the means through which - sometimes at the cost of their own lives - they retold the most immediate stories of war.

Harold Evans is an internationally acclaimed editor, author, and publisher. He was the editor of The Sunday Times and The Times of London. He was subsequently president and publisher of Random House. He is the author of The American Century. He was guest curator of the Newseum exhibition that inspired this book.