For more than three decades Anne Garrels has reported from some of the most dangerous places on earth. First for ABC News and then for National Public Radio she has reported from the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Nicaragua, El Salvador, both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her insights into the issues facing us in this election year will be important.  Video of Lecture

In 2003 she published Naked In Baghdad a memoir about her time in Iraq reporting before, during and after the American bombing campaign. She began her career as a research assistant for ABC News and because of her fluency in Russian she was assigned to Moscow. She built relationships there that gave her unusual insight to the struggles of the Russian people through the fall of the Soviet Union to the Putin era. 

Her latest book Putin Country is a study of Russia and her people through the frame work of a city deep in the interior. She says Putin Country is sort of like middle America. It is hardcore, industrial and like most of the country outside of Moscow. The city is Chelyabinsk. By describing the effect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the corruption, the sanctions and now new intimidation she helps us understand Putin's appeal with his image of standing up to the west and promising to make Russia great again.