Jon Lee Anderson (born January 15, 1957) is an American biographer, author, investigative reporter, war correspondent, and staff writer for The New Yorker, reporting from war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Palestine, El Salvador, Ireland, Lebanon, Iran, and throughout the Middle East as well as during Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts with K38 Water Safety as documented in the New Yorker article Leaving Desire.

Relying too much on secondary sources for his knowledge of Cuban history, he fails to grasp the nature of the revolution for which Guevara, Fidel Castro and so many others were willing to die.

"[5] In Washington Monthly, Matthew Harwood praised The Fall of Baghdad, writing, "his crisp and lush prose reads more like a work of literature than like reportage.

In the early 1970s, he attempted to hitchhike to Togo but ultimately ended up at Las Palmas for months, unable to secure passage to the African coast.

After living on the streets, going without food for days at a time, and coming down with scurvy, he reunited by happenstance with his sister at the city's U.S. Consulate and returned to the United States.