Best of
Journalism

1997

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood


David Simon - 1997
    But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad.Through the eyes of one broken family--two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough, Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.

The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967


Hunter S. Thompson - 1997
    Thompson. In letters to a Who's Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez—not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors—Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective. Passionate in their admiration, merciless in their scorn, and never anything less than fascinating, the dispatches of The Proud Highway offer an unprecedented and penetrating gaze into the evolution of the most outrageous raconteur/provocateur ever to assault a typewriter.

Personal History


Katharine Graham - 1997
    Katharine's account of her years as subservient daughter and wife is so painful that by the time she finally asserts herself at the Post following Phil's suicide in 1963 (more than halfway through the book), readers will want to cheer. After that, Watergate is practically an anticlimax.

Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina


Tim Page - 1997
    This book is a memorial to those men and women, and in many cases it includes the last photographs they took.    Horst Faas and Tim Page, two photographers who worked and were wounded in Vietnam, have gathered many thousands of pictures by those who were killed. Their search has taken them through the archives in Hanoi as well as those of Western agencies. In some cases families have generously provided access to private files where unknown bodies of work have lain unseen for more than forty years.    The list of the dead includes some of the greatest photographers of the century, such as Robert Capa and Larry Burrows, and some who had been working in Vietnam for only a matter of days before their deaths. A number of the Cambodian photographers working for the Western press were executed. Other photographers, like Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, disappeared. Their loss inspired Tim Page to begin this memorial.    The resulting sequence of photographs follows the course of the war and the transformation of the serene landscapes of Cambodia and Vietnam into scenes of nightmarish devastation. At the moments of intense battle one is reminded not only of the courage of the photographers but of the compassion amid the brutality of war. These photographers were intimate with war to a degree that may well be denied future generations. That intimacy led to their deaths. Their photographs are their legacy.

Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II


James Tobin - 1997
    To millions, the loss of this American folk hero seemed nearly as great as the loss of the wartime president.If the hidden horrors and valor of combat persist at all in the public mind, it is because of those writers who watched it and recorded it in the faith that war is too important to be confined to the private memories of the warriors. Above all these writers, Ernie Pyle towered as a giant. Through his words and his compassion, Americans everywhere gleaned their understanding of what they came to call “The Good War.” Pyle walked a troubled path to fame. Though insecure and anxious, he created a carefree and kindly public image in his popular prewar column—all the while struggling with inner demons and a tortured marriage. War, in fact, offered Pyle an escape hatch from his own personal hell. It also offered him a subject precisely suited to his talent—a shrewd understanding of human nature, an unmatched eye for detail, a profound capacity to identify with the suffering soldiers whom he adopted as his own, and a plain yet poetic style reminiscent of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. These he brought to bear on the Battle of Britain and all the great American campaigns of the war—North Africa, Sicily, Italy, D-Day and Normandy, the liberation of Paris, and finally Okinawa, where he felt compelled to go because of his enormous public stature despite premonitions of death. In this immensely engrossing biography, affectionate yet critical, journalist and historian James Tobin does an Ernie Pyle job on Ernie Pyle, evoking perfectly the life and labors of this strange, frail, bald little man whose love/hate relationship to war mirrors our own. Based on dozens of interviews and copious research in little-known archives, Ernie Pyle's War is a self-effacing tour de force. To read it is to know Ernie Pyle, and most of all, to know his war.

The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century


Studs Terkel - 1997
    A personal selection of the best interviews from eight classic books by America's much-loved pre-eminent oral historian, Studs Terkel.

Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writings


Angela Carter - 1997
    Angela Carter is revealed here, anew, as one of the most important thinkers of twentieth-century world literature--and one of its most pungent voices."--Rick MoodyOne of contemporary literature's most original and affecting fiction writers, Angela Carter also wrote brilliant nonfiction. Shaking a Leg comprises the best of her essays and criticism, much of it collected for the first time. Carter's acute observations are spiked with her piercing matter-of-factness, her devastating wit, her penchant for mockery, and her passion for the absurd. Whether discussing films or food, feminism or fantasy, science fiction or sex, Carter consistently explores new territories and overturns old ideas. No cultural icon escapes her scrutiny; as in her fiction, Carter offers glorious evidence of the transforming power of the imagination. From delightfully wicked commentaries on Gone with the Wind, a Japanese fertility festival, and fellow writers, including Lawrence, Lovecraft, Borges, and Burroughs, to enchanting personal essays, Carter shares her thoughts and herself with glee."What a wonderful collection--sharp, funny, too decent for sarcasm but great wit and humanity, an unusual combination. But it makes us miss her, miss laughing with her, that real, intelligent, tough writing woman."--Grace Paley

Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler


Thomas Frank - 1997
    But today it is culture that stands at the heart of the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and consolidates the power of business over the American mind. For a decade The Baffler has been the invigorating voice of dissent against these developments, in the grand tradition of the muckrakers and The American Mercury. This collection gathers the best of its writing to explore such peculiar developments as the birth of the rebel hero as consumer in the pages of Wired and Details; the ever-accelerating race to market youth culture; the rise of new business gurus like Tom Peters and the fad for Hobbesian corporate "reengineering"; and the encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every last nook and cranny of American life. With its liberating attitude and cant-free intelligence, this book is a powerful polemic against the designs of the culture business on us all.

Dark Heart: The Story of a Journey into an Undiscovered Britain


Nick Davies - 1997
    Davies discovered they were part of a network of children selling themselves on the streets of the city, running a nightly gauntlet of dangers: pimps, punters, the Vice Squad, disease, drugs. This propelled Davies into a journey of discovery through the slums and ghettoes of our cities. He found himself in crack houses and brothels, he befriended street gangs and drug dealers.Davies' journey into the hidden realm is powerful, disturbing and impressive, and is bound to rouse controversy and demands for change. He unravels threads of Britain`s social fabric as he travels deeper and deeper into the country of poverty, towards the dark heart of British society.

On Being a Photographer: a Practical Guide


David Hurn - 1997
    On Being a Photographer has become one of the most popular books ever written with practical advice for photographers.

Letter To Daniel Tie In: Despatches From The Heart


Fergal Keane - 1997
    His latest work for Radio 4 was Letter to Daniel, an emotional message to his newborn son.

On Being a Photographer


David Hurn - 1997
    A Practical Guide

Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History: The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency


Russell Miller - 1997
    From Robert Capa's stark photograph of a Loyalist soldier being shot in the head during the Spanish Civil War to Eve Arnold's astonishingly intimate portraits of well-known faces - from Joan Crawford to Malcolm X - Magnum has changed how we perceive our political leaders, social crises, and the communities next door.Magnum's photographers are some of the most talented, brave, and resourceful in the world: the founders, Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger, and Henri Cartier-Bresson; and recruits, including Eve Arnold, Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, James Nachtwey, Eugene Richards, and Sebastiao Salgado. Magnum follows them on assignment, facing bodyguards and visa troubles and taking to the risk-filled trenches of several wars for the perfect shot. Full of wonderful stories and heroic feats, Magnum is an essential volume for anyone interested in photography or photojournalism.

The Tick Tock Man


Terence Strong - 1997
    It's a task that demands quiet courage and nerves of steel. But this IRA campaign is different, with each new device more cunning and deadly than the last one.

The Road Back to Paris (Modern Library)


A.J. Liebling - 1997
    J. Liebling filed with The New Yorker during the Second World War. The magazine sent Liebling to Paris in 1939, hoping that he could replicate in wartime France his brilliant reporting of New York life. Liebling succeeded triumphantly, concentrating on writing the individual soldier's story to illuminate the larger picture of the European theater of the war and the fight for what Liebling felt was the first priority of business: the liberation of his beloved France. The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.For a complete list of titles, see the inside of the jacket. Despite his ill health and bad eyesight, Liebling went on patrol, interviewed soldiers, fled Paris and returned after D-Day, was shot at in North Africa and bombed in the blitz in London. Into thischaos, as his biographer Raymond Sokolov comments, "he brought himself, a fiercely committed Francophile with a novelist's skill for crystallizing his day-to-day experiences into a profound chronicle of a 'world knocked down.' "

Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life


Walt Harrington - 1997
    This collection of award-winning articles elevates human interest reporting to new heights in the literary journalism field. In a detailed and hands-on, practical primer on in-depth human reporting, editor Walt Harrington prefaces this outstanding collection by sharing the trade secrets from his 15 years as a staff writer for The Washington Post Magazine. Fifteen articles follow, each containing fascinating examples of evocative human reporting by some of the most artful journalists in America. Each article is followed by an invaluable afterword from each journalist describing how he or she conceptualized, reported and wrote their particular story.In this passionate and intense volume, Harrington gives journalists inspiration and guidance on how to turn ordinary life into extraordinary journalism A must for students and teachers of journalism, for budding magazine and newspaper writers, and for professional journalists who wish to be re-inspired by the superb reporting, distinctive writing, and sound advice found in this text.The man who couldn't read ; Shadow of a nation / Gary Smith --The American man at age 10 / Susan Orlean --The last housewife in America ; TV without guilt / David Finkel --Mrs. Kelly's monster / Jon Franklin --Missing Alice / Pete Earley --In these girls, hope is a muscle ; Zepp's last stand / Madeleine Blais --Each other's mirror / Jeanne Marie Laskas --How the world turns in West Philadelphia / Richard Ben Cramer --Death in Venice / Mike Sager --True detective ; When daddy comes home ; The shape of her dreaming / Walt Harrington

Minority Report


H.L. Mencken - 1997
    Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy.In 1956, Mencken read through his notebooks and extracted those pieces he thought truest, most pertinent, most precise, or most likely to blow the dust out of a reader's brain.

One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism


William Greider - 1997
    must take to lead the world economy onwards

A Thousand Suns


Dominique Lapierre - 1997
    Lapierre delves eloquently into the heart of the history of uour time

Angels & Demons


Thomas French - 1997
    This is the story of the murders, their aftermath, and the handful of people who kept faith amid the unthinkable.

Crowded House: Something So Strong


Chris Bourke - 1997
    When "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong" exploded in the US charts, worldwide success looked inevitable. Critics compared them musically to the Beatles and fans adored them for their warmth and humour on stage. Four brilliant albums later, their roller-coaster ride of achievements and disappointments came to an end on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, in front of one of the largest audiences in Australian history. The dream was over, the band broken up, their enormous promise only partly fulfilled. In this definitive account, New Zealand journalist Chris Bourke has written the true story of Crowded House. With unparalleled access to all band members, their families, friends, musical collaborators, managers, and record company personanel, he has captured their essence. It is a unique tale of musical chemistry, family bonds and the personal costs of pursuing an artistic vision. From the manic energy of the recording studio to the machinations of the record industry, this riveting account is a book for every Crowded House fan.

Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy


Robert W. McChesney - 1997
    This is a must reading for anyone who wants to get a quick understanding of this troubling trend."—Susan J. Douglas, author of Growing Up Female with the Mass Media

Fierce Dancing: Adventures in the Underground


C.J. Stone - 1997
    The author has pursued an alternative lifestyle for more than a quarter of a century, and has written for The Guardian and The Big Issue.

The Concrete Wave: The History of Skateboarding


Michael Brooke - 1997
    Designed for a dedicated readership of skateboarding fans and aficionados, The Concrete Wave provides: A spectacular history of skateboarding (1960-2000); Hundreds of fabulous photographs - from the archival to the awesome!; An interview with world champion Tony Hawk, and much more...; All presented in a format both radical and readable and designed to appeal to everyone who loves their skateboard!

What's Going On


Nathan McCall - 1997
    The resulting volume is guaranteed to shake the assumptions of readers of every pigmentation and political allegiance.   In What's Going On, McCall adds up the hidden costs of the stereotype of black athletic prowess, which tells African American teenagers that they can only succeed on the white man's terms. He introduces a fresh perspective to the debates on gangsta rap and sexual violence. He indicts the bigotry of white churches and the complacency of the black suburban middle class, celebrates the heroism of Muhammad Ali, and defends the truth-telling of Alice Walker. Engaging, provocative, and utterly fearless, here is a commentator to reckon with, addressing our most persistent divisions in a voice of stinging immediacy.

1967: The Last Good Year


Pierre Berton - 1997
    We were, Pierre Berton reminds us, a nation in love with itself, basking in the warm glow of international applause brought on by the unexpected success of Expo 67 and pumped up by the year-long birthday party that had us all warbling Ca-na-da, as Bobby Gimby and his gaggle of small children pranced down the byways of the nation.It was a turning-point year, a watershed year--a year of beginnings as well as endings. One royal commission finally came to a close with a warning about the need for a new approach to Quebec. Another was launched to investigate, for the first time, the status of Canadian women. New attitudes to divorce and homosexuality were enshrined in law. A charismatic figure, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, made clear that the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation. The seeds of Women's Lib, Gay Pride, and even Red Power, were sown in the centennial year. (Of all the pavilions on the Expo site, Berton singles out the Indian pavilion as having the greatest impact.)The country was in a ferment that year. Canadians worried about the Americanization of every institution from the political convention to Hockey Night in Canada. People talked about the Generation Gap as thousands of flower children held love-ins in city parks. The government tried to respond by launching the Company of Young Canadians, a project that was less than successful.The most significant event of 1967 was Charles de Gaulle's notorious "Vive le Quebec libre!" speech in Montreal. It gave the burgeoning separatist movement a new legitimacy, enhanced by Rene Levesque's departure from the Liberal party later that year.Throughout the book, the author gives us insightful profiles of some of the significant figures of 1967: the centennial activists Judy LaMarsh and John Fisher; the Expo entrepreneurs, Philippe de Gaspe Beaubien and Edward Churchill; Walter Gordon, the fervent nationalist, and his rival, Mitchell Sharp; Lester Pearson and his bete noire, John Diefenbaker; the three "men of the world" who helped make Canada internationally famous: Marshall McLuhan, Glenn Gould, and Roy Thomson; hippie leaders like David dePoe, American draft dodgers like Mark Satin, women's activists like Doris Anderson and Laura Sabia, youth workers like Barbara Hall, radicals like Pierre Vallieres (author of White Niggers of America) and such dedicated nationalists as Madame Chaput Rolland and Andre Laurendeau.In spite of the feeling of exultation that marked the centennial year, an opposite sentiment runs through the book like dark thread: the growing fear that the country was facing its gravest crisis. Berton points out that we are far better off today than we were in 1967. "Then why all the hand wringing?" he asks. Because of "the very real fear that the country we celebrated so joyously thirty years ago is in the process of falling apart."In that sense, 1967 was the last good year before all Canadians began to be concerned about the future of our country."

Purple Homicide: Fear and Loathing on Knutsford Heath: A Pantomime


John Sweeney - 1997
    This is the story behind the five-week Tatton campaign during the 1997 British General Election in which journalist Martin Bell unseated Neil Hamilton.

A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish


Naomi Seidman - 1997
    Her sophisticated history is the first book-length exploration of the sexual politics underlying the "marriage" of Hebrew and Yiddish, and it has profound implications for understanding the centrality of language choices and ideologies in the construction of modern Jewish identity.Seidman particularly examines this sexual-linguistic system as it shaped the work of two bilingual authors, S.Y. Abramovitsh, the "grand-father" of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature; and Dvora Baron, the first modern woman writer in Hebrew (and a writer in Yiddish as well). She also provides an analysis of the roles that Hebrew "masculinity" and Yiddish "femininity" played in the Hebrew-Yiddish language wars, the divorce that ultimately ended the marriage between the languages.Theorists have long debated the role of mother and father in the child's relationship to language. Seidman presents the Ashkenazic case as an illuminating example of a society in which "mother tongue" and "father tongue" are clearly differentiated. Her work speaks to important issues in contemporary scholarship, including the psychoanalysis of language acquisition, the feminist critique of Zionism, and the nexus of women's studies and Yiddish literary history.

Where the Game Matters Most


William Gildea - 1997
    of photos.

History News: The Aztec News


Philip Steele - 1997
    You have arrived in the ancient and remarkable island city of Tenochtitlan, home of the mighty Aztec people. While you are here, pick up a copy of THE AZTEC NEWS and learn about our ways: our politics, religion, trading and farming methods, medicine, military, and sports, as well as the latest news on the invaders who threaten the very existence of our civilization—all in THE AZTEC NEWS!

Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture


Stephen Duncombe - 1997
    In this multifarious underground, Pynchonesque misfits rant and rave, fans eulogize, hobbyists obsess. Together they form a low-tech publishing network of extraordinary richness and variety. Welcome to the realm of zines.In this, the first comprehensive study of zine publishing, Stephen Duncombe describes their origins in early-twentieth-century science fiction cults, their more proximate roots in 60s counter-culture and their rapid proliferation in the wake of punk rock. While Notes from Underground pays full due to the political importance of zines as a vital web of popular culture, it also notes the shortcomings of their utopian and escapist outlook in achieving fundamental social change. Duncombe’s book raises the larger questionof whether it is possible to rebel culturally within a consumer society that eats up cultural rebellion.Packed with extracts and illustrations from a wide array of publications, past and present, Notes from Underground is the first book to explore the full range of zine culture and provides a definitive portrait of the contemporary underground in all its splendor and misery.

Cp Stylebook: A Guide For Writers And Editors


Peter Buckley - 1997
    

England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie


Michael Bracewell - 1997
    It claims that the most culturally significant type in British culture is the alienated suburban dandy, nowadays the kid who feels odd, hates his comfortable, dull surroundings and yearns for the bright lights of the big cities.

Secrets: The CIA's War at Home


Angus MacKenzie - 1997
    An award-winning journalist, Angus Mackenzie waged and won a lawsuit against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act and became a leading expert on questions concerning government censorship and domestic spying. In Secrets, he reveals how federal agencies--including the Department of Defense, the executive branch, and the CIA--have monitored and controlled public access to information. Mackenzie lays bare the behind-the-scenes evolution of a policy of suppression, repression, spying, and harassment. Secrecy operations originated during the Cold War as the CIA instituted programs of domestic surveillance and agent provocateur activities. As antiwar newspapers flourished, the CIA set up an "underground newspaper" desk devoted, as Mackenzie reports, to various counterintelligence activities--from infiltrating organizations to setting up CIA-front student groups. Mackenzie also tracks the policy of requiring secrecy contracts for all federal employees who have contact with sensitive information, insuring governmental review of all their writings after leaving government employ. Drawing from government documents and scores of interviews, many of which required intense persistence and investigative guesswork to obtain, and amassing story after story of CIA malfeasance, Mackenzie gives us the best account we have of the government's present security apparatus. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the inside secrets of government spying, censorship, and the abrogation of First Amendment rights.

What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters


Michael X. Delli Carpini - 1997
    Drawing on extensive survey data, including much that is original, two experts in public opinion and political behavior find that many citizens are remarkably informed about the details of politics, while equally large numbers are nearly ignorant of political facts. And despite dramatic changes in American society and politics, citizens appear no more or less informed today than half a century ago. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter demonstrate that informed persons are more likely to participate, better able to discern their own interests, and more likely to advocate those interests through political actions. Who, then, is politically informed? The authors provide compelling evidence that whites, men, and older, financially secure citizens have substantially more knowledge about national politics than do blacks, women, young adults, and financially less- well-off citizens. Thus citizens who are most disadvantaged socially and economically are least able to redress their grievances politically. Yet the authors believe that a broader and more equitably informed populace is possible. The challenge to America, they conclude, lies in providing an environment in which the benefits of being informed are clearer, the tools for gaining information more accessible, and the opportunities to learn about politics more frequent, timely, and equitable.