And gift it to your friends for Christmas or any other occasion. Know that you will be “doing well” by giving them one of the most important and well-written books of these times, and you will be “doing good” by focusing attention on what I call the Global War on Free Expression that has picked up steam in the last several years. Free expression and brave reporting (speaking truth to power) are a hallmark of our Western values, no more so than in the United States, where it is enshrined as the First Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be abridged even by a democratic majority. The American President has taken his stand against free expression, so now this book is more important than ever.The first thing you will notice is that it is gripping, enthralling, and compelling, a story well-written and excellently told. One of the most difficult things in the world to write is a biography of a complex and larger-than-life personality, which is surely who Marie Colvin was. Lindsey Hilsum avoids the traps of pop psychology or attempting to reduce the enigmatic and remarkable Marie Colvin to a set of motivations or insecurities. Instead she places points of light in space and over the course of the book those coalesce into a poetic vision, an impression of a person who was very difficult to explain or to understand.Marie Colvin simply was compelled to tell the story of the oppressed, the victims of massacre and persecution, the forgotten and neglected. And she consistently traveled to the most dangerous places in the world to tell those stories and eventually paid for that with her life. She had a faith that normal people would hear and read her stories of human suffering and would react in a normal and human manner that might generate change. She did this despite several frightening obstacles, not the least of which were those that rose up in front of her because she was a woman. She never harped on those particular barriers and instead chose to ignore them. She thought of herself as a reporter, not as a female war correspondent.Ms. Hilsum also paints and impression of Marie Colvin as a uniquely interesting human being. And it is critically important that we understand the humanity of the people who tell these stories which the powerful will do anything, not even short of murder, to thwart the truth they would tell. Like Jamal Khashoggi, they are not merely a byline, but interesting and determined individuals who will put their lives on the line so that the people whose suffering would be silenced by the powers that cause it will have their stories told. Perhaps no such reporter is as significant as Marie Colvin, widely considered to be the greatest war correspondent of her generation.Reading this biography, you will be transported into the life of a brave, complicated, driven, talented, haunted, intelligent, passionate human being whose life and death commitment was to humanity, to the better angels of our nature, to the belief that we want the world to be a safer, more just place. It is at once an inspiring tale and an informative.Time Magazine has highlighted the value of these reporters, by naming them the persons of the year. Marie Colvin herself is a subject of a Hollywood movie, “A Private War,” starring Rosamund Pike as Marie, in a role that has already garnered award attention. Marie Colvin is also the subject of a documentary, “Under the Wire.” As compelling as those films may be, they are weak sauce compared to Ms. Hilsum’s extraordinarily complete biography of this compelling woman. This is one of the best and most important books of the year.By way of disclaimer, I knew Marie Colvin well over four decades and can add that there is nothing in this amazing book that is wrong or off or incorrect. That alone is an accomplishment. That it fills out the rest as best as possible without judgment or explanation is a wonder. Marie Colvin, and all she loved and feared and was betrayed by all come to life in the pages of “In Extremis.” Buy it. Read it. Give a dozen copies to friends. You will have done several good things well.Gerald Weaver(Gerald Weaver is the author of the novel, "The First First Gentleman," August 2016, London Wall Publishing. His well-received first novel, "Gospel Prism," was published in May 2015.)