The life and death of a courageous war reporter

In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin. By Lindsey Hilsum. Chatto & Windus; 437 pages; $28 and £20.

FIGHTING WARS has generally been seen as the concern of men—and so has writing about them. Yet at the height of the turmoil after the Arab spring, women covered all the region’s conflicts, including for The Economist. Most female reporters do not want to be typecast, but might acknowledge that their gender influences their work, just as it does for men. It can help: women in the Middle East tend to be less visible at (for example) checkpoints, especially if they wear a headscarf. They can be welcomed into female-only domains. Male interviewees often open up to them.