Best of
Journalism

1987

Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike


David Beresford - 1987
    While a stunned world watched and distraught family members kept bedside vigils, one "soldier" after another slowly went to his death in an attempt to make Margaret Thatcher's government recognize them as political prisoners rather than common criminals.Drawing extensively on secret IRA documents and letters from the prisoners smuggled out at the time, David Beresford tells the gripping story of these strikers and their devotion to the cause. An intensely human story, Ten Men Dead offers a searing portrait of strife-torn Ireland, of the IRA, and the passions -- on both sides -- that Republicanism arouses.

The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays


Vasily Grossman - 1987
    The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wants to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; “The Sistine Madonna,” a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life. Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man.

Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens


Ted Conover - 1987
    The compelling adventure of a young writer who poses as a Mexican wetback to discover the hardships, fear and camaraderie of illegal aliens crossing the border to work in the United States.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung


Lester Bangs - 1987
    Advertising in Rolling Stone and other major publications.

Eyewitness to History


John Carey - 1987
    . . Witnessing the destruction of Pompeii. . . Accompanying Julius Caesar on his invasion of Britain. . . Flying with the crew of The Great Artiste en route to dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. . . Civilization's most momentous events come vibrantly alive in this magnificent collection of over three hundred eyewitness accounts spanning twenty-four turbulent centuries -- remarkable recollections of battles, atrocities, disasters, coronations, assassinations and discoveries that shaped the course of history, all related in vivid detail by observers on the scene.

The Powwow Highway


David Seals - 1987
    Their "war pony," a burned-out, rusty, '64 Buick LeSabre, has left a trail of dust from Montana's Lame Deer Reservation halfway down Interstate 25 toward New Mexico. It's a journey of enlightenment, a quest for greatness... and it just might be one of the wildest, funniest, most outrageous rides you've ever been on - a beer-guzzling, joint-smoking, staggering gallop down that twisting road to self-discovery... The Powwow Highway

Frog Mountain Blues


Charles Bowden - 1987
    Today recreational facilities dot the Catalinas’ peaks, while housing developments creep up their foothills. Charles Bowden and Jack W. Dykinga here convey the natural beauty of the Catalinas and warn readers that this unique wilderness could easily be lost through easy access and overuse.

The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's Hottest Beat


Edna Buchanan - 1987
    Reissue.

Open Net


George Plimpton - 1987
    He survives a game against the Philadelphia Flyers relaticely unscathed - and brings back this memorable portrait of the rough-and-tumble world of professional hockey.

Witness to a Century: Encounters with the Noted, the Notorious, and the Three SOBs


George Seldes - 1987
    . . is a reminder . . . of the sins of suppression and untruth that have been and can be committed in the name of American journalism . . . One of the last first-person statements from a generation that included Hitler, Nehru, and Mao . . . and Seldes too." --Columbia Journalism Review

The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution


Ian Hancock - 1987
    

Corruptions of Empire: Life Studies and the Reagan Era


Alexander Cockburn - 1987
    The background, the myths and the impulse to exile form the first three sections of this book, whose overall architecture will, I hope, give some sense of the terms in which I have viewed my trade.”—Alexander Cockburn, from the introduction

Music Talks: Conversations with Musicians


Helen Epstein - 1987
    A collection of in-depth profiles of celebrated musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, master violin teacher Dorothy DeLay, James Galway and Yo Yo Ma.

The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Consumer Society


Sut Jhally - 1987
    Jhally argues that by selling viewing time to advertisers, television converts audiences into laborers who "work" for the media in the same way that workers do in a factory. By watching commercial messages on TV, viewers actively create symbolic meaning, but also generate profit for the media in return for the wage of entertainment.

The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA


Jonathan Kwitny - 1987
    In this explosive expose he reveals the most mysterious collection of spies ever caught in a single scandal. Kwitny is host of The Kwitny Report, seen weekly on 200 PBS TV affiliates.