Two War Reporter Brothers, 60 Countries and Now a Pair of New Books
Scott was traveling with the photographer Paolo Pellegrin to see what was happening at a hospital when a drone strike missed their vehicle by a matter of yards. The shock wave knocked all the buttons off Scott's shirt and gave him a concussion. Blood was pouring out of his ear.
The frighteningly close call convinced the brothers that they needed a rule. 'We have a kind of superstition, which is that it's not good to be in the same war zone at the same time,' Jon Lee said. 'And the one time we were, Scott nearly got killed.'
The Andersons were recounting this story in Scott's New Jersey living room — comfortably far from a war zone, though finding them on the same continent, let alone in the same city, was a matter of fortuitous timing. Scott, 66, who lives in Jersey City, was leaving for a monthlong trip to Turkey with his teenage daughter in a few weeks; Jon Lee, 68, who lives with his wife in Dorset, England, was passing through New York to give a talk at the Americas Society before visiting his daughter in New Hampshire, where she was about to give birth.
It isn't exactly common for two people from the same family to do the uncommon work of reporting from some of the world's most dangerous hot spots — Jon Lee as a staff writer for The New Yorker, Scott as a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Nor is it common for siblings to have new books coming out in the same month. In another accident of fortuitous timing, Scott's 'King of Kings' and Jon Lee's 'To Lose a War' both publish in August.
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