MICHAEL KELLY was born into a newspaper family. His father Tom was a reporter on the Washington Daily News. His mother Marguerite writes the wonderful "Family Almanac" column for the Washington Post.

Sometime over the past few decades reporters became journalists, but Michael never really made the leap. He shunned TV. He was not a natural at symposia and panel discussions. He remained, until his death in a Humvee accident in Iraq Friday, a newspaperman.

In other words, he lived low but read high. He wanted and needed to be out where the action was. As a young reporter at the Cincinnati Post he exposed abuses of power in the statehouse and on the state supreme court, in prize-winning series. His unmatched coverage of Desert Storm for the New Republic ended up in his book, "Martyrs' Day," by common agreement the most beautiful and gripping account of that war. He approached each story not as a sociologist, looking down and analyzing the people he was covering, but as a curious man among his fellows. Going back to Iraq and getting embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division in this conflict was risky, but it is impossible to imagine the war without Mike there. He wouldn't have been Mike if he hadn't gone.

A few days before his death, he told the New York Times that it was important that the experiences of the regular soldiers, rather than just the tactics and decisions of the generals, be recorded for posterity. In his final dispatches, he described the bizarre through-the-looking-glass world of young Americans who found themselves fighting against an unprincipled foe--forced to kill onrushing Iraqi soldiers, even while knowing that many of those Iraqis didn't really want to fight. They were merely trying to safeguard their families, who were being held hostage by Baath party thugs.

In phone calls back to colleagues in the States, Michael said that he was surprised by the ferocity of the fighting and that he planned on writing a book about his experiences. It would have been a masterpiece.

As anybody who read his Washington Post column knows, Michael could be a deft humorist, but he also had the sensibility of a tenacious Irish crusader. If anyone offended his moral sensibility, as Bill Clinton did, Mike went after him with uncompromising gusto. He wasn't one to back down from a necessary fight.

If you worked under Mike, you were golden. He treated his writers with gregarious good humor and love. But if you worked over Mike, you had to watch out. When he was editor of the New Republic, he got into a feud with the magazine's owner, Marty Peretz, which ended with his firing. It was a confrontation of two strong men, each confidently holding his ground.

The best newspapermen, of the sort Mike was, are not just dogged reporters and tireless crusaders. They have a hidden literary side. Mike certainly did. He was a mischievous and rambunctious boy, but he also loved to read. As a teenager, he devoured P.G. Wodehouse and Max Beerbohm. He made the most of abundant opportunities to party at the University of New Hampshire. But all the while, he was acquiring a large store of cheap secondhand books, and reading them.