John Simpson and Kathy Gannon in Kabul

John Simpson, longtime foreign correspondent for BBC News sometimes considered the dean of British war correspondents, famously "liberated" Kabul in 2001 when he entered the city with Northern Alliance troops as the Taliban government and militias fled ... before all the shooting was even over.

But he wasn't the first correspondent in the capital of Afghanistan. Reporting from Kabul through the 2001 war, and, as a matter of daily routine, under the Taliban regime before it, was Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press.

No fanfare. No trumpet blasts about "liberating" anything. Just good solid reporting. In my opinion, she's simply one of the best reporters in the business. Anywhere.

Since then Gannon has written a book. Titled "I is for Infidel" (an apt self-description since Gannon is both the "I" and the "Infidel" of the title). She even has a a website touting the book and linking to several articles she's written. Read "Road Rage," a PDF-format reprint from The New Yorker.

Same story, two reporters
Simpson's account of the liberation of Kabul is in the tradition of war correspondents since William Russell covered the Charge of the Light Brigade (later the subject of a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) in the 1850s. One of many highlights:

The small BBC team decided to head on into the city, on our own, and on foot - so no-one would think we were soldiers.

We ploughed on - radio side-by-side with television.

As we walked into Kabul city we found no problems around us, only people that were friendly and, I am afraid, chanting "kill the Taleban" - although as we understand it there are not going to be that many Taleban around.

It felt extraordinarily exhilarating - to be liberating a city which had suffered so much under a cruel and stifling regime.

It was 0753 local time (0323 GMT) and Kabul was a free city, after five years of perhaps the most extreme religious system anywhere on earth.

And here's how ">Gannon covered the same story. Notice how the focus is different. But, of course, she was already inside the city:

Groups of five to 10 men huddled in the streets, wrapped in woollen shawls. Northern Alliance fighters sped through the streets in vehicles camouflaged with mud that had been left behind by Taliban troops.

In the northern Khair Khana district, inhabited largely by ethnic Tajiks who fled the earlier fighting north of the city, some people shouted: "Congratulations. Oh my God, they are here." Some men hugged each other.

"We leave everything to God. We don't know what will happen. We pray only for peace," said Sheer Agha, an elderly man wrapped in a striped shawl, his grey beard reaching almost to his chest.

"We are happy. Now I have to go to the barber to shave my beard," said Zabiullah, an ethnic Tajik. "Today is a happy day."

Two men on a bicycle looked at each other. "Do you think I can shave now?" one asked. The Taliban required men to grow long beards and failure to do so invited harsh punishment.

Read both and decide which one you like better. (I know which one I like.) Be ready to compare and contrast the two.