"I wasn't who I was because I was a journalist, I was a journalist because of who I am." We need such journalists. Sean Carberry has written a brave book for which there are no passport stamps-the soul highs and lows of intoxicating faith leaping around dangerous combat zones on a years-long adrenalin rush. This is a clarion call for better mental health treatment after a confusing exodus from that world, where writing knits together that which is frayed and keeps indelible experiences on the shelves of story, always.

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Passport Stamps brings to mind Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." Carberry describes the evanescence of sunshine and darkness followed by the inevitable being "on the way" of a journalist. Carberry's world is a tattered web of people and places: Serbia, Russia, Egypt, Columbia, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan-our simultaneously horrifying yet alluring broken globe. Passport Stamps records Carberry's memories-accounts which make the reader ache for his forgotten life, real or imagined. It is a sharp, raking marvelous travel book, an autobiography rich with detail and ponderings about life.

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A lot of journalists come back from covering war and disaster and write the book about what they saw. Sean Carberry tells a different story-about what goes on inside of such a reporter's mind out there. Hopes, dreams, fears, embarrassment, hard lessons. It's all there, and it's quite a yarn.