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Atlantic, The, April, 2004 by The Editors
At the time of his tragic death, at forty-six, Michael Kelly had already packed several lifetimes' worth of accomplishments and triumphs into a relatively short career." So begins an essay in this issue of The Atlantic Monthly by Robert Vare, who was Michael Kelly's editor at The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker before Kelly came to The Atlantic , in 1999.
Mike was killed a year ago this April on the outskirts of Baghdad while covering the Iraq War for this magazine—an assignment that he expected would yield a sequel to Martyrs' Day , his extraordinary and award-winning account of the 1991 Gulf War. We will never have that book; all that remains of the ambition are several dozen notebooks filled with penciled observations whose meaning is obscured by lack of context and atrocious handwriting. But thanks to the efforts of Vare, who is a senior editor ...