The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny - Tapa dura

Provides a portrait of Fred Cuny, a renegade engineer who journeyed into countries torn apart by disaster, until his disappearance on a mission to the Russian republic of Chechnya

man a hero, and what price must he pay? For one man, the answers came in the scariest place on earth.

Fred Cuny spent his life in terrible places. In countries rent by war, earthquake, famine, and hurricane, Cuny saved hundreds of thousands of lives with a fearlessness that amazed all who knew him. A Texan, a teller of tall tales, a womanizer, and a renegade, Cuny grew ever more daring in his globe-trotting adventures as his motivations became murkier. Was he a danger junkie? A CIA spy? Or a man who truly believed he had the wits and courage to save the world?

After twenty-five years of heroic work that earned Cuny the nickname "Master of Disaster," he set off to the rogue Russian republic of Chechnya, a land of gangsters and Islamic terrorists, a quasi-state engaged in an unimaginably savage war with a Russian army of drunken, brutal incompetents. Cuny went to try to stop the war, but for the first time in his life he was scared, unsure of himself in an insane la