Looking for Trouble - Tapa dura

One of the first women to break into the world of combat and third-world reporting, a former correspondent for CBS's "60 Minutes" looks back over her career among the leaders and rogues of the world's hot spots

ondent Leslie Cockburn has dined with the Cali Cartel, marched with the Khmer Rouge, hunted down the Black Turban in Afghanistan, pursued the Russian mafia to the Arctic Circle, shared pomegranate sauce with the Ayatollahs, and stopped a small Kurdish war, but she has never told these stories in a book-until now.

Cockburn was one of the first women to break into the tight fraternity of combat and third-world reportage when she began work at the London bureau of NBC News in 1976-where successful news gathering required "unorthodox tactics, stamina, and, for best results, a criminal mind." By the time she moved to CBS's "60 Minutes," Cockburn had interviewed Muammar Qaddaffi and Margaret Thatcher, been arrested as spy in Gambia, and effectively eliminated whatever doubts her colleagues might have had about a woman's ability to tackle the news business's most dangerous assignments.

A mother of three who has made a career of breaking down barriers, Leslie Cock