Henry Kissinger found himself in the doghouse after talking to her, famously describing his interview as “the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press.” Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni walked out of the room when she ripped off her chador. Golda Meir, the legendary Israeli prime minister, was struck dumb when she bluntly asked, “Seriously, will there ever be peace in this place?”

Sultry-eyed, sharp-tongued and glamorous as Liz Taylor in the 50s, Italian news correspondent Oriana Fallaci routinely got access others in her profession only dreamed of. She used it to ask the burning questions of her age: Would the U.S. Army recognize the magnitude of its mistake in Vietnam? Would the turbaned clerics that had taken over Iran push their brand of Islam on their neighbors? Would Israel ever agree to partition Jerusalem? Would India ever reach out to Pakistan?