Back in Italy after 14 months in wartime Iraq, this Italian journalist felt the international news coverage of bombs, rockets, and insurgency lacked the optimism she witnessed there every day, and writing an account of her own impressions became an effort to set the record straight. Trained as an emergency medical responder, Anna Prouse arrived in Baghdad in June 2003 to work at the Italian Red Cross Hospital, where she found the Iraqis she worked with to be full of aspirations for the future despite danger and provision shortages. She was subsequently hired to work in public affairs for the Coalition Provisional Authority inside the Green Zone (or the International Zone), where occupation authorities live and work. There in the foreign community, as elsewhere in Baghdad, she discovered a spirit of energy, dedication, and comradeship in the mission of rebuilding a devastated country.