Best of
Journalism

2005

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East


Robert Fisk - 2005
    A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.

A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army


Vasily Grossman - 2005
    A Writer at War – based on the notebooks in which Grossman gathered raw material for his articles – depicts the crushing conditions on the Eastern Front, and the lives and deaths of soldiers and civilians alike. It also includes some of the earliest reportage on the Holocaust. In the three years he spent on assignment, Grossman witnessed some of the most savage fighting of the war: the appalling defeats of the Red Army, the brutal street fighting in Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk (the largest tank engagement in history), the defense of Moscow, the battles in Ukraine, and much more.Historian Antony Beevor has taken Grossman’s raw notebooks, and fashioned them into a narrative providing one of the most even-handed descriptions – at once unflinching and sensitive – we have ever had of what he called “the ruthless truth of war.”From the Hardcover edition.

The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine (Book & 8 DVD-ROMs)


The New Yorker - 2005
    "A cultural monument, a journalistic gold mine, an essential research tool, an amazing time machine." What has the "New Yorker" said about Prohibition, Duke Ellington, the Second World War, Bette Davis, boxing, Winston Churchill, "Citizen Kane," the invention of television, the Cold War, baseball, the lunar landing, Willem de Kooning, Madonna, the internet, and 9/11? Eighty years of "The New Yorker" offers a detailed, entertaining history of the life of the city, the nation, and the world since 1925. Every article, every cartoon, every illustration, every advertisement, exactly as it appeared on the printed page, in full color. Flip through full spreads of the magazine to browse headlines, art work, ads, and cartoons, or zoom in on a single page, for closer viewing. Print any pages or covers you choose, or bookmark pages with your own notes. Our powerful search environment allows you to home in on the pieces you want to see. Our entire history is catalogued by date, contributor, department, and subject. 4, 109 ISSUES. HALF A MILLION PAGES. YOURS TO SEARCH AND SAVOR.

1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories


Chris Rose - 2005
    It is a roller coaster ride of observations, commentary, emotions, tragedy and even humor - in a way that only Rose could find in a devastated wasteland. They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of survivors and believers, stories of hope and despair. And stories about refrigerators. With photographs by British photojournalist Charlie Varley, 1 Dead in Attic freeze frames New Orleans caught between an old era and a new, New Orleans in its most desperate time, as it struggled out of floodwaters and willed itself back to life in the autumn and early winter of 2005.

AA Gill is Away


A.A. Gill - 2005
    A. Gill is one of the most feared writers in London, noted--according to the New York Times--for his "rapier wit." Some even consider the mere assignment of a subject to Gill a hostile act. But when the notice "AA GILL IS AWAY" runs in the Sunday Times of London, the city can rest peacefully in the knowledge that the writer is off traveling. "My editor asked me what I wanted from journalism and I said the first thing that came into my head--I'd like to interview places. To treat a place as if it were a person, to go and listen to it, ask it questions, observe it the way you would interview a politician or a pop star," Gill writes. Upon his return, readers are treated to an account of his vacations to places like famine-stricken Sudan, the pornography studios of California's San Fernando Valley, the dying Aral Sea or the seedy parts of Kaliningrad. The result is one of the most fascinating, stylish and irreverent collections of travel writing.

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated


Dave Eggers - 2005
    They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings: inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside.The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others (thousands by all estimates) who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way. (from the publisher's website)

Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War


Anthony Shadid - 2005
    Born and raised in Oklahoma, of Lebanese descent, Shadid, a fluent Arabic speaker, has spent the last three years dividing his time between Washington, D.C., and Baghdad. The only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his extraordinary coverage of Iraq, Shadid is also the only writer to describe the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the unexpected impact of America's invasion and occupation. Through the moving stories of individual Iraqis, Shadid shows how Saddam's downfall paved the way not just for hopes of democracy but also for the importation of jihad and the rise of a bloody insurgency. "A superb reporter's book," wrote Seymour Hersh; Night Draws Near is, according to Mark Danner, "essential."

Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town


Nate Blakeslee - 2005
    The operation, a federally-funded investigation performed in cooperation with the local authorities, was based on the work of one notoriously unreliable undercover officer. At trial, the prosecution relied almost solely on the uncorroborated, and contradictory, testimony of that officer, Tom Coleman. Despite the flimsiness of the evidence against them, virtually all of the defendants were convicted and given sentences as high as ninety-nine years. Tom Coleman was named a Texas Lawman of the Year for his work.Tulia is the story of this town, the bust, the trials, and the heroic legal battle that ultimately led to the reversal of the convictions in the summer of 2003. Laws have been changed in Texas as a result of the scandal, and the defendants have earned a measure of bittersweet redemption. But the story is much bigger than the tale of just one bust. As Tulia makes clear, these events are the latest chapter in a story with themes as old as the country itself. It is a gripping, marvelously well-told tale about injustice, race, poverty, hysteria, and desperation in rural America.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men / A Death in the Family / Shorter Fiction


James Agee - 2005
    In his brief, often turbulent life, he left enduring evidence of his unwavering intensity, observant eye, and sometimes savage wit.This Library of America volume collects his fiction along with his extraordinary experiment in what might be called prophetic journalism, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a collaboration with photographer Walker Evans that began as an assignment from Fortune magazine to report on the lives of Alabama sharecroppers, and that expanded into a vast and unique mix of reporting, poetic meditation, and anguished self-revelation that Agee described as “an effort in human actuality.” A 64-page photo insert reproduces Evans’s now-iconic photographs from the expanded 1960 edition.A Death in the Family, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that he worked on for over a decade and that was published posthumously in 1957, recreates in stunningly evocative prose Agee’s childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the upheaval his family experienced after his father’s death in a car accident when Agee was six years old. A whole world, with its sensory vividness and social constraints, comes to life in this child’s-eye view of a few catastrophic days. It is presented here for the first time in a text with corrections based on Agee’s manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.This volume also includes The Morning Watch (1951), an autobiographical novella that reflects Agee’s deep involvement with religious questions, and three short stories: “Death in the Desert,” “They That Sow in Sorrow Shall Not Reap,” and the remarkable allegory “A Mother’s Tale.”

The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate


Marjorie Williams - 2005
    Beloved for her sharp analysis, elegant prose and exceptional ability to intuit character, Williams wrote political profiles for the Washington Post and Vanity Fair that came to be considered the final word on the capital's most powerful figures. Her accounts of playing ping-pong with Richard Darman, of Barbara Bush's stepmother quaking with fear at the mere thought of angering the First Lady, and of Bill Clinton angrily telling Al Gore why he failed to win the presidency -- to name just three treasures collected here -- open a window on a seldom-glimpsed human reality behind Washington's determinedly blank façe. Williams also penned a weekly column for the Post's op-ed page and epistolary book reviews for the online magazine Slate. Her essays for these and other publications tackled subjects ranging from politics to parenthood. During the last years of her life, she wrote about her own mortality as she battled liver cancer, using this harrowing experience to illuminate larger points about the nature of power and the randomness of life. Marjorie Williams was a woman in a man's town, an outsider reporting on the political elite. She was, like the narrator in Randall Jarrell's classic poem, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo," an observer of a strange and exotic culture. This splendid collection -- at once insightful, funny and sad -- digs into the psyche of the nation's capital, revealing not only the hidden selves of the people that run it, but the messy lives that the rest of us lead.

A Hungry Heart (A Memoir)


Gordon Parks - 2005
     Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, on November 30, 1912, he left home at age fifteen when his mother passed away. For the next twelve years, he lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, working as a piano player, bus boy, Civilian Conservation Corpsman, and professional basketball player before taking up photography in the late 1930s and moving to Chicago. He was awarded the first Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in photography in 1942 and chose to work with Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C. During World War II, he was an Office of War Information (OWI) correspondent. He photographed fashion for Vogue and Glamour before joining the staff of Life in 1949 and remained a photojournalist for the magazine until 1969. He also became famous in the late 1960s for his stories on Black revolutionaries, later incorporated into his book Born Black. He was a founder and editorial director of Essence magazine from 1970 to 1973. His film career began in 1961 when he wrote and directed a documentary, Flavio. He received an Emmy Award for another documentary, Diary of a Harlem Family, in 1968. He produced and directed Hollywood films including The Learning Tree, Shaft, Shaft's Big Score, The Super Cops, and Leadbelly. He is first and foremost a celebrated photojournalist and fine art photographer whose work, collected and exhibited worldwide, is emblematic of American culture. In A Hungry Heart, he reaches into the corridors of his memory and recounts the people and events that shaped him: from growing up poor on the Kansas prairie to withstanding the unbearably cold winters of Minnesota to living on the edge of starvation in Harlem during the Depression. He more than survived the challenges and crises of his life; he thrived and has become one of the most celebrated and diversely talented figures in American culture.

My Brother's Road: An American's Fateful Journey to Armenia


Markar Melkonian - 2005
    Markar Melkonian spent seven years unravelling the mystery of his brother's road: a journey which began in his ancestors' town in Turkey and led to a blood-splattered square in Tehran, the Kurdish mountains, the bomb-pocked streets of Beirut, and finally, to the windswept heights of mountainous Karabagh. Monte's life embodied the agony and the follies of the end of the Cold War and the unraveling of the Soviet Union. Yet, who was this man, really? A terrorist or a hero? My Brother's Road is not just the story of a long journey and a short life, it is an attempt to understand what happens when one man decides that violent deeds speak louder than words

Film Writing and Selected Journalism


James Agee - 2005
    In 1944 W. H. Auden called Agee's film reviews for The Nation "the most remarkable regular event in American journalism today." Those columns, along with much of the movie criticism that Agee wrote for Time through most of the 1940s, were collected posthumously in Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments, undoubtedly the most influential writings on film by an American.Whether reviewing a Judy Garland musical or a wartime documentary, assessing the impact of Italian neorealism or railing against the compromises in a Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway, Agee always wrote of movies as a pervasive, profoundly significant part of modern life, a new art whose classics (Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Vigo) he revered and whose betrayal in the interests of commerce or propaganda he often deplored. If his frequent disappointments could be registered in acid tones, his enthusiasms were expressed with passionate eloquence. This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects.Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb. This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune — on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting — and a sampling of his literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S. J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams.

The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft


Robert S. Boynton - 2005
    Thompson, and Gay Talese launched the New Journalism movement, Robert S. Boynton sits down with nineteen practitioners of what he calls the New New Journalism to discuss their methods, writings and careers.The New New Journalists are first and foremost brilliant reporters who immerse themselves completely in their subjects. Jon Krakauer accompanies a mountaineering expedition to Everest. Ted Conover works for nearly a year as a prison guard. Susan Orlean follows orchid fanciers to reveal an obsessive subculture few knew existed. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spends nearly a decade reporting on a family in the South Bronx. And like their muckraking early twentieth-century precursors, they are drawn to the most pressing issues of the day: Alex Kotlowitz, Leon Dash, and William Finnegan to race and class; Ron Rosenbaum to the problem of evil; Michael Lewis to boom-and-bust economies; Richard Ben Cramer to the nitty gritty of politics. How do they do it? In these interviews, they reveal the techniques and inspirations behind their acclaimed works, from their felt-tip pens, tape recorders, long car rides, and assumed identities; to their intimate understanding of the way a truly great story unfolds. Interviews with: Gay TaleseJane Kramer*Calvin TrillinRichard Ben Cramer*Ted Conover*Alex Kotlowitz*Richard Preston*William Langewiesche*Eric SchlosserLeon DashWilliam FinneganJonathan Harr*Jon Krakauer*Adrian Nicole LeBlancMichael Lewis*Susan OrleanRon RosenbaumLawrence Weschler*Lawrence Wright** Search our online catalog to find other titles by these Vintage and Anchor Books authors.

Stanley Kubrick. Drama & Shadows


Rainer Crone - 2005
    The volume includes 350 black and white photographs taken between 1945-50 including rare unpublished images

Slim Aarons: A Place in the Sun


Slim Aarons - 2005
    His subjects were the beautiful and the celebrated, the rich and the powerful, the talented and the privileged, high society and aristocracy. Slim Aarons captured their image for the picture magazines of the 1940s - '90s, and, in so doing so, defined the image of the Beautiful People - the post-war international Jet Set. Aarons always shows his subjects in their natural setting, in a circumstance synonymous with their station in life, and in so doing, he gained their trust and a most precious thing - access. And so he was welcomed into the exclusive precincts of the world's elite, in essence attaining the status of court photographer. The images included here are the fruit of that access.

Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media


David Edwards - 2005
    It is the most important book about journalism I can remember." - John Pilger"Regular critical analysis of the media, filling crucial gaps and correcting the distortions of ideological prisms, has never been more important. Media Lens has performed a major public service by carrying out this task with energy, insight, and care." - Noam Chomsky "Media Lens is doing an outstanding job of pressing the mainstream media to at least follow their own stated principles and meet their public service obligations. [This is] fun as well as enlightening." - Edward S. HermanCan a corporate media system be expected to tell the truth about a world dominated by corporations?Can newspapers, including the 'liberal' Guardian and the Independent, tell the truth about catastrophic climate change -- about its roots in mass consumerism and corporate obstructionism -- when they are themselves profit-oriented businesses dependent on advertisers for 75% of their revenues?Can the BBC tell the truth about UK government crimes in Iraq when its senior managers are appointed by the government? Has anything fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote of the establishment: "They know they can trust us not to be really impartial"?Why did the British and American mass media fail to challenge even the most obvious government lies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003? Why did the media ignore the claims of UN weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95% "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1998?This book answers these questions, and more.Since July 2001, Media Lens has encouraged thousands of readers to email senior editors and journalists, challenging them to account for their distorted reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Haiti, East Timor, climate change, Western crimes in Central America, and much more. The responses -- often surprising, sometimes outrageous -- reveal the arrogance, unaccountability and servility to power of even our most respected media.

Mencken: The American Iconoclast


Marion Elizabeth Rodgers - 2005
    Mencken stands out as one of our most influential stylists and fearless iconoclasts--the twentieth century's greatest newspaper journalist, a famous wit, and a constant figure of controversy. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers has written the definitive biography of Mencken, the most illuminating book ever published about this giant of American letters. Rodgers captures both the public and the private man, covering the many love affairs that made him known as The German Valentino and hishappy marriage at the age of 50 to Sara Haardt, who, despite a fatal illness, refused to become a victim and earned his deepest love. The book discusses his friendships, especially his complicated but stimulating partnership with the famed theater critic George Jean Nathan. Rodgers vividly recreatesMencken's era: the glittering tapestry of turn-of-the-century America, the roaring twenties, depressed thirties, and the home front during World War II. But the heart of the book is Mencken. When few dared to shatter complacencies, Mencken fought for civil liberties and free speech. We see theprominent role he played in the Scopes Monkey Trial, his long crusade against Prohibition, his fierce battles against press censorship, and his constant exposure of pious frauds and empty uplift. The champion of our tongue in The American Language, Mencken also played a pivotal role in defining theshape of American letters through The Smart Set and The American Mercury, magazines that introduced such writers as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes. The paradoxes of Mencken's life are explored, as new gaps are filled regarding his notorious views of minorities and hisconflict, as a German American, during two world wars. And throughout, Rodgers captures the irrepressible spirit and irreverent wit for which Mencken was famed. Drawing on research in more than sixty archives including private collections in the United States and in Germany, previously unseen, on exclusive interviews with Mencken's friends, and on his love letters and FBI files, here is the full portrait of one of America's most colorful andinfluential men.

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row


David R. Dow - 2005
    He changed his position as the men on death row became real people to him, and as he came to witness the profound injustices they endured: from coerced confessions to disconcertingly incompetent lawyers; from racist juries and backward judges to a highly arbitrary death penalty system.It is these concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented that prove the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it's precisely this fundamental-and lethal-injustice, Dow argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether.

The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper, 1898-1911


Nicholson Baker - 2005
    The World was famous for muckraking and sensationalism, but to a contemporary eye what is most striking about the paper (and in particular its Sunday edition) is that it was filled with colorful art -- caricatures, full-page cartoons, disaster drawings, fiction illustrations, hand-lettered typography, weird science, halftone photographs, maps, and more. Author Nicholson Baker, dubbed the "Erin Brockovich of the library world" by the New York Times Book Review for his dedication to saving early American newspaper collections, started buying up archives from public libraries around the country and around the world, forming the American Newspaper Repository. Baker's research was published as Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, which won the National Book Critics' Circle award for non-fiction in 2002. Now Baker and co-author Margaret Brentano have selected 85 of the finest examples of period reporting, bold and playful graphic design, long-lost comic strips, and society pieces from the heyday of the New York World for reproduction in this delightful, oversized volume. Baker's introductory essay argues the significance and beauty of Pulitzer's paper, and Brentano's detailed captions and notes accompany the colorful reproductions throughout.

Life: Remembering John Lennon: 25 Years Later


LIFE - 2005
    And the soul of that group was John Lennon, the smart Beatle, who with his mates changed the way the world looked, partied and lived. From the days in a Hamburg basement club to the Ed Sullivan Show to the movies to the White Album, the music traced a phenomenal trajectory. Along the way came his beloved Yoko and sons Julian and Sean, the break up of the Fab Four, the fascinating solo albums, and finally, in the end, as assassin's bullet. Life was there with John and the Beatles from their first visit to these shores till the final days. This exultant tale is told in vivid photography and words, as John is brought to life in a truly special volume.

Good People in an Evil Time


Svetlana Broz - 2005
    She discovered that her patients were not only in need of medical care, but that they urgently had a story to tell, a story suppressed by nationalist politicians and the mainstream media. What Broz heard compelled her to devote herself over the next several years to the collection of firsthand testimonies from the war. These testimonies show that ordinary people can and do resist the murderous ideology of genocide even under the most terrible historical circumstances. We are introduced to Mile Plakalovic, a magnificent humanist, who drove his taxi through the streets of Sarajevo, picking the wounded up off the sidewalk and delivering food and clothing to young and old, even when the bombing was at its worst. We meet Velimir Milosevic, poet, who traveled with an actor and entertained children as they hid in basements to avoid the bombing and gunfire, and we hear the stories of countless others who put themselves in grave danger to help others, regardless of ethnic background. Faced with a world in which unspeakable crimes not only went unpunished but were rewarded with glory, profit, and power, the Bosnians of all faiths who testify in this book were starkly confronted with the limits and possibilities of their own ethical choices. Here, in their own words they describe how people helped one another across ethnic lines and refused the myths promoted by the engineers of genocide. This book refutes the stereotype of inevitable natural enmities in the Balkans and reveals the responsibility of individual actions and political manipulations for the genocide; it is a searing portrait of the experience of war as well as a provocative study of the possibilities of resistance and solidarity. The testimonies reverberate far beyond the frontiers of the former Yugoslavia. This compelling book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reality on the ground of the ethnic conflicts of the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.

Jo Ramirez: Memoirs of a Racing Man


Jo Ramírez - 2005
    Jo Ramirez is one of the best-liked and most respected Formula 1 personalities of recent years, and is held in high esteem both inside and outside the Grand Prix paddock. Here is his personal account of his life in motor racing, told with humor, warmth and joy, and providing an honest insight into the highs and lows of a career that saw him work with many of the sport's greatest heroes, although he is perhaps best known for his many years as Team Co-ordinator at McLaren, including the legendary Prost/Senna era. A compelling story that will delight all fans of motor racing.

I A, Me-ist: or The Portable Board


Mykel Board - 2005
    It features 53 columns from 1985 to 2000.

From Our Own Correspondent: A Celebration of Fifty Years of the BBC Radio Programme


Tony Grant - 2005
    And for the fiftieth anniversary of the programme Profile collected together the programme's best pieces. From Our Own Correspondent has been one of BBC Radio 4's flagship programmes for fifty years. And this book, containing dispatches from all around the world, shows why FOOC, as it is affectionately known, has become such a well-known and much-loved institution. It contains not only the observations of journalists covering the big news events of the day, but also their personal insights into how people around the world live their lives. There are dispatches from Misha Glenny in Russia, Mark Tully in India, Charles Wheeler in the USA, Jeremy Vine in the Congo, Ben Brown in Zimbabwe and Orla Guerin in the West Bank. All offer a unique perspective describing the background to events around the world as they happen.

Eyes of the Storm: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: The Photographic Story


Dallas Morning News - 2005
    These Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers caught every aspect of the storm and its aftermath on film and many of those photos will be seen for the first time in this stirring work of photojournalism at its best. Nearly 270 images-culled from over 3,000 taken before, during, and after Katrina struck-capture the heartbreak of hundreds of thousands of people suddenly made homeless, Gulf Coast towns completely wiped out by wind and storm surge, and, ultimately, scenes of hope as people return, rebuild, and rebound from one of the nation's worst natural disasters. Looking past the political and bureaucratic squabbles that seem to have dominated the news at the expense of human suffering, the book's focus is squarely on the people of Katrina-both rescuer and rescued, old and young, helpful and heroic. For every scene of utter devastation there is a corresponding image of the will to survive, such as a church service in a parking lot, or a horse seeking refuge from a flooded paddock by climbing on to the front porch of a house. Separations as well as reunions are captured in moving images that will endure alongside classic photographs from America's previous calamities, and will draw comparisons to the work of Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans. Eyes of the Storm is not only a graphic visual record of nature at its most malevolent, but also a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Money Power Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood


Brenda Ann Kenneally - 2005
    Having inspired the likes of Eugene Richards and Thomas Roma, Brooklyn provides an inexhaustible muse, and Kenneally comes to the familiar ground with a fresh perspective. Her poignant, psychological photographs span generations, tracing the same people she sees everyday on her street. With her camera, Kenneally narrates their tale of both hope and despair as she explores how her subjects empower themselves in a lost culture of drugs and prison. Money, Power, Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood chronicles pregnancies and births, institutions and streets, drugs and rehab, showing the community of inner-city families at once full of life and also institutionalized by the welfare system. Through it all, Kenneally evokes their dreams for a better life, tempered with the awareness that they may be caught in the cyclic lifestyle of limited opportunites. The photographs are in the best sense fully present, alive to what, rather than searching for what is not. Her images draw us to hope for their survival and compel us to experience the depths and complexities of family life in the American social and justice systems. Money, Power, Respect details a crucial historical moment in our nation's nearly total abandonment of the poor. This book makes it impossible to turn away from the yearning towards life, to detach the economics of the situation from the machinery of the heart.

Classic Wiley: A Lifetime of Punchers, Players, Punks & Prophets


Ralph Wiley - 2005
    This volume brings together Wiley's best feature stories from Sports Illustrated, columns from ESPN.com, his 'Parting Shots' from the ESPN television show The Sports Reporters, and excerpts from his books and screenplays.

The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals


Adi Ophir - 2005
    Rather than concentrating on the age-old themes of justice and freedom, Adi Ophir offers a moral theory that emphasizes the existential and political nature of evil. Ophir's main contention is that evil is neither a diabolical element residing in the hearts of men nor a meaningless absence of the good. Rather, it is the socially structured order of -superfluous evils.- Evils, like pain, suffering, loss, and humiliation, are superfluous when they could have been -- but were not -- prevented. Through close analysis of seminal works by modern and postmodern philosophers -- from Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Sartre, and Arendt to Foucault, Levinas, Derrida, and Lyotard -- Ophir forges a new perspective for thinking about what it means to be a moral being: to be moral, he argues, is to care for others, and to be committed to preventing, at all costs, their suffering and distress.A theoretically sophisticated work, The Order of Evils also bears the traces of Ophir's own political and personal experiences as an Israeli philosopher and activist. Two major events in recent Jewish history have profoundly influenced his thinking: the Holocaust and the prolonged Israeli domination of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Ophir does not compare the two events. Instead, he introduces a typology of disasters that allows them to be located within the wide spectrum of humanly generated calamities whose specificity and general patterns emerge clearly and distinctly as what they are and are not.

Full Metal Jacket Diary


Matthew Modine - 2005
    Faced with the prospects of a career-defining role and mentorship by a cinematic great, the 24-year-old Hollywood actor arrived in London armed with a large-format Roliflex camera-inspired by Kubrick's early career as a "Look "photographer-and a notebook to record his own on-set reportage; preparation for his starring role as a Marine Corps journalist. But expectations eroded as a strange, creeping sickness pervaded the set, a horrific accident sidelined a principal, and an unexpected rivalry arose with a co-star. And as the months dragged on, take-by-take, Modine realized he was falling victim to a manipulative mind-game of the Grand Master himself. By the time his tour of duty ended a year and a half later, Modine had shot hundreds of photos and written countless entries. Only now-after two decades and the death of Kubrick-can Modine look back on his images and words. The result-a coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of a seminal Vietnam saga. A book like no other, Stanley Kubrick would have been the first in line to buy "Full Metal Jacket Diary."

Under Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam


Catherine Leroy - 2005
    Through the camera’s eye, we see the war from both the combatants’ perspective and that of the Vietnamese civilians, for whom the conflict was a constant and horrendous backdrop. Some of the photographs are well known, verging on the iconic, others are less well circulated but no less evocative. All make indelible impressions on the viewer–perhaps more so now than when they were taken, thirty to fifty years ago. The essays accompanying the photographs tell us about what happened to the photos’ subjects, both when the shutter captured them and since; about the challenges facing the photographers in the heat of battle; and how, in some cases, the photographers changed history by bringing Vietnam’s senseless violence to ordinary Americans’ doorsteps, thereby helping turn public opinion against the war. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Under Fire is a potent, often poignant reminder of the men and women whose work helped forge the collective memory of a generation.

A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq


Paul William Roberts - 2005
    This is his exposi of the politics behind the recent war -- and the brutal reality the Iraqis experienced but the rest of the world didn't see. In Baghdad when the bombs started falling, Roberts witnesses the "shock and awe" campaign firsthand, mourns the loss of his friend's entire family, and escapes to Jordan, only to return two weeks later behind the American army. A scathing indictment of the Bush administration's new imperialism, "A War Against Truth recounts Robert's experiences in the newly "liberated" Iraq, where he meets looters selling priceless artifacts, interviews Tariq Aziz in hiding, is interrogated by U.S. intelligence.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2005


American Society of Magazine Editors - 2005
    This year's selections, chosen from National Magazine Awards finalists and winners, include David Grann's article from the "New Yorker" on the execution of a possibly innocent man; Sheri Fink's report from the "New York Times Magazine" on the alleged euthanization of patients during Hurricane Katrina; and Fareed Zakaria's compelling take from "Newsweek" on Iran's weakening regime."The Best American Magazine Writing 2010" also includes absorbing profiles, arresting interviews, personal essays, and entrancing fiction. "Esquire"'s Mike Sager recounts a promising quarterback's shocking descent into drugs; "Vanity Fair"'s Bryan Burrough shares the confessions of the year's other major Ponzi schemer, and, from "McSweeney's Quarterly," Wells Tower weaves a transporting tale of elemental desire. "GQ"'s Tom Carson offers his critique of America's current vampire craze; Mitch Albom rediscovers Detroit's indomitable spirit in "Sports Illustrated"; and Garrison Keillor sings an ode to the homegrown joys of state fairs in "National Geographic." Additional contributors include Atul Gawande, Megan McArdle, and many others commenting on a range of issues, from health care and the national debt to war movies and the controversy over circumcision. Altogether the writing collected here proves the rich pleasures waiting in the best magazines.

Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper


Laurel Leff - 2005
    It examines how the decisions that were made at The Times ultimately resulted in the minimizing and misunderstanding of modern history's worst genocide. Laurel Leff, a veteran journalist and professor of journalism, recounts how personal relationships at the newspaper, the assimilationist tendencies of The Times' Jewish owner, and the ethos of mid-century America, all led The Times to consistently downplay news of the Holocaust. It recalls how news of Hitler's 'final solution' was hidden from readers and - because of the newspaper's influence on other media - from America at large. Buried by The Times is required reading for anyone interested in America's response to the Holocaust and for anyone curious about how journalists determine what is newsworthy.

Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes?


Colin Wheildon - 2005
    Out of print for several years, this expanded and updated edition of the book is based on research carried out by the author in Sydney. Parts were first published in a brochure Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by the Newspaper Advertising Bureau. It created a furor in the publishing and advertising industry because while it supports some old mores, it demolishes others. As David Ogilvy says in the foreword: "Hitherto designers have had to rely on their guesses as to what works best... all too often they guess wrong. Thanks to Colin Wheildon they no longer have to guess. No guesswork here. Only facts." Previously published as Type & Layout: How Typography and Design can Get Your Message Across or Get in the Way, by Strathmoor Press, Inc., Berkeley, California, USA. ISBN 0962489158

The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East


Barry Rubin - 2005
    The Long War for Freedom finally presents to the Western world an in-depth portrait of those 'small voices' in the Arab world waging the most critical battle of the twenty-first century--the battle for the soul of the Middle East. No one with any interest in the struggle for economic and political reform in the Arab world can afford to neglect this penetrating and provocative work, which lays bare both the importance and the great difficulty of helping the Arab world to transform itself."--Kenneth Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm and The Persian Puzzle

The Thunder Agents Companion


Wallace Wood - 2005
    Agents had a relatively short life during their initial run in American comics during the 1960s, you just can't keep a good team down, as evidenced by their periodic revivals over the years. This is the authorized, and definitive, book on the history of such memorable characters as Dynamo, No-Man, Lightning, Andor, the Iron Maiden, and all the other super-heroes and super-villains created by the late, great Wallace Wood and company. To celebrate the team's 40th anniversary, included are interviews with Woody's creative team, as well as those superb writers and artists involved in the various T-Agents resurrections over the decades, and a detailed examination of the origins and exploits of the characters themselves, including the shocking truth behind the first super-hero to ever be "killed," Menthor, the master of mental force!

Censored 2006: The Top 25 Censored Stories


Peter Phillips - 2005
    The top stories are listed democratically in order of importance according to students, faculty, and a national panel of judges. Each of the top stories is presented at length, alongside updates from the investigative reporters who broke the stories.

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos


Richard Lloyd Parry - 2005
    For thirty-two years, it had been paralyzed by the grip of the dictator and mystic General Suharto, but now the age of Suharto was coming to an end. Would freedom prevail, or was the “time of madness” predicted centuries before now at hand? A book of hair-raising immediacy and a riveting account of a voyage into the abyss, In the Time of Madness is an accomplishment in the great tradition of Conrad, Orwell, and Ryszard Kapuscinski.

.45 Dangerous Minds: The Most Intense Interviews from Seconds Magazine


Steven Blush - 2005
    Interviewees include Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, JG Ballard, Henry Rollins, Allen Ginsberg, Anton LaVey, Joe Coleman, Peter Sotos, Joe D'Allesandro, Ron Jeremy, Wayne Kramer, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, John Waters, Richard Ramirez, Charles Manson, Ed Sanders and Robert Williams.Contributors include Michael Moynihan, Carlo McCormick, Boyd Rice, David Aaron Clarke, Art Deco and John Aes-Nihil.Steven Blush is the author of "American Hardcore. He lives in New York.

Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season


Matt Taibbi - 2005
    But the closer he got to the politicians, the more pompous and vapid they appeared. How could he write anything meaningful about these puffed-up martinets, much less vote for them? Nevertheless, Taibbi forged on and continued his responsibilities as a serious campaign reporter—though not without frequent bouts of blind panic, drug use, and donning a gorilla suit. Spanking the Donkey indicts the surreal irrelevance of today’s mainstream politics with barbed wit and caustic intelligence. Follow Taibbi as he covers the primary for the 2004 presidential election, joining him for a spot on John Kerry’s campaign plane, face-to-face encounters with John Edwards’s pancake makeup, enough Howard Dean press conferences to memorize the good doctor's stump speech by heart, and—just to spice things up—a two-month stint working undercover in a Republican campaign office in Orlando, Florida. Brimming with uncensored opinions and total truth, Taibbi captures the real American political mind; as a patron at Flo’s Bar in Manchester, New Hampshire, eloquently puts it: “They all suck . . . who’s running?”“Gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi will do anything . . . to bring political reporting back to life. Spanking the Donkey is all the more necessary in the aftermath of an election that harnessed enough liberal outrage to light the Vegas strip, cost more than a billion dollars, absorbed hundreds of hours we will never get back, and achieved absolutely nothing.” —Salon

In Other Words: Artists Talk about Life and Work


Anthony DeCurtis - 2005
    His many subjects - music legends, movie directors, artistic provocateurs, up-and-coming talents, visionary songwriters - all speak with rare candor about the meanings within and the motivations behind their best work. Many of these interviews - which originally appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times and other publications - have been significantly expanded. DeCurtis has also written new introductions that tell the story behind these stories, transforming this collection into an episodic memoir of a life on the front lines of cultural journalism. These gripping conversations will make readers feel that they are sitting, as DeCurtis did, at a dinner table or in a quiet room alone, learning everything they want to know about some of the most revered artists of our time.

The Reception of H.G. Wells in Europe


Patrick Parrinder - 2005
    Wells was described by one of his European critics as a 'seismograph of his age'. He is one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction, and as a novelist, essayist, educationalist and political propagandist his influence has been felt in every European country. This collection of essays by scholarly experts shows the varied and dramatic nature of Wells's reception, including translations, critical appraisals, novels and films on Wellsian themes, and responses to his own well-publicized visits to Russia and elsewhere. The authors chart the intense ideological debate that his writings occasioned, particularly in the inter-war years, and the censorship of his books in Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain. This book offers pioneering insights into Wells's contribution to 20th century European literature and to modern political ideas, including the idea of European union. Reception of H.G. Wells in Europe Review

Confessions Of A Radical Traditionalist


John Michell - 2005
    For those readers only familiar with his better-known writings on Earth Mysteries, unusual phenomena and eccentric figures, much of the material here will be a pleasant surprise. Since its inception, Michell has regularly contributed to the monthly magazine The Oldie, one of BritainÕs best-kept publishing secrets. MichellÕs column, ÒAn Orthodox Voice,Ó is a perpetual font of erudite insights, charming commentaries, wittily scathing pronouncements, and divine revelations. Writing in clear, exquisite language, he deftly applies traditional wisdom to various aspects of the modern conundrum. In author Patrick HarpurÕs words, ÒIf Socrates had ever written a column, this would be it.Ó Divided into nine sections, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist presents MichellÕs thoughts on a wealth of heretical topics, from ancient echoes of a Golden Age to the madness of modernity and the unfolding apocalypse. Undergirding these ruminations is the rarely heard perspective of an enlightened, idealistic Platonist. Even when slaying sacred cows or lancing contemporary buffoons, he never forgets that the elusive Òparadise of the philosophersÓ is within reach for those with the strength of vision to see it. In our inverted modern world, these disarming orthodox writings have the delicious flavor of forbidden fruit. The 108 essays in this volume have been carefully selected and introduced by Joscelyn Godwin, a long-time admirer of John MichellÕs work and himself an acknowledged authority in matters esoteric and metaphysical.

Fire's Guide To Free Speech On Campus


Harvey A. Silverglate - 2005
    FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus focuses on the threat to freedom of expression posed by the imposition of speech codes, under various misleading names, on campuses across the nation.

Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production


Axel Bruns - 2005
    The book investigates the collaborative publishing models of key news Websites, ranging from the worldwide Indymedia network to the massively successful technology news site Slashdot, and further to the multitude of Weblogs that have emerged in recent years. Building on collaborative approaches borrowed from the open source software development community, this book illustrates how gatewatching provides an alternative to gatekeeping and other traditional journalistic models of reporting, and has enabled millions of users around the world to participate in the online news publishing process.

An Outbreak of Peace: Angola's Situation of Confusion


Justin Pearce - 2005
    What if a woman came back with a child fathered by someone from the other side, would they welcome her,' I asked. He gave me that non-smile. 'To accept a woman who is carrying another man's child - that's all part of national reconciliation.' (Chapter 12, "War and Peace in Angola", February 2003) The Angolan story is only another in the fantastic web of indulgence, misery, absurdity and suffering beyond expression that is bred in peace no less than war in 'situations' the world over. The story told in this book involves an understanding of what is particular to Angola, but it goes far beyond that. It is a story of the extremes of the human condition and, as such, its relevance is timeless. Combining reportage and analysis, Justin Pearce shows the human face of Angola at a critical juncture in its history. Jonas Savimbi, leader of the rebel movement UNITA, was killed in February 2002. Crippled by the large imbalance between its resources and those of the MPLA government and the death of its messianic leader, UNITA collapsed, giving Angola its first extended period of peace since the nationalist uprising against Portuguese rule in the 1960s. Working as the BBC correspondent based in Luanda, Justin Pearce was the only English-speaking journalist based in Angola in 2001 and 2002. He travelled extensively in Angola, hearing the testimonies of those whose lives were shaped by political divisions and war. He was also able to observe how Angola was governed in a manner which had little in common with the ideals professed by the government since independence. This is an important book. It speaks to the non-specialist reader with an interest in African affairs; or people who have a particular interest in Angola, be it through business, humanitarian or policy development work, and who are looking for a perspective on the country's recent social history.

Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader


W.K. Stratton - 2005
    But the best piece here is his searing memoir of his white-trash Texas parents, who died in what was ruled a double suicide. Etched in acid and heart's blood, it is a terse masterpiece." —Malcolm Jones, Newsweek "The least known of the New Journalism's founding fathers, Grover Lewis has long been a legend among nonfiction writers, and this overdue collection shows us why. A beautiful stylist blessed with a blistering honesty, Grover saw it all and wrote it like nobody else could. Put Splendor in the Short Grass up on the shelf with the best of Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and Gay Talese. It belongs there." —Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio's Morning Edition "Grover Lewis, the most literary of journalists, did things his way, simultaneously inventing a genre and setting the standard. These days ambitious feature writers, whether they know it or not, all strive to do it Grover's way. But, as this long overdue collection shows, not only did Grover do it first, he did it best." —Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My OwnBackyard and Hold the Enlightenment "Grover Lewis was a gift to American letters. He had a hard eye, a sharp eye for hidden reality, and the unique ability to raise a popular journalism piece to the level of a universal truth. Plus he wrote like an angel. This collection, Splendor in the Short Grass, is not just a terrific read, it's an important work. I loved every page of it." —James Crumley, author of the hardboiled mysteries Dancing Bear, The Last Good Kiss, and The Final Country "Your gonzo journalism library isn't complete without him." —Ruminator "Grover was, after all, the most stone wonderful writer that nobody ever heard of....His job was to hammer the detritus of fugitive cultural encounters into elegant sentences, lapidary paragraphs, and knowable truth; and, in truth, the loveliness and lucidity of Grover's writing always rose to the triviality of the occasion." —Dave Hickey, from the foreword Grover Lewis was one of the defining voices of the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. His wry, acutely observed, fluently written essays for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice set a standard for other writers of the time, including Hunter S. Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Timothy Ferris, Chet Flippo, and Tim Cahill, who said of Lewis, "He was the best of us." Pioneering the "on location" reportage that has become a fixture of features about moviemaking and live music, Lewis cut through the celebrity hype and captured the real spirit of the counterculture, including its artificiality and surprising banality. Even today, his articles on Woody Guthrie, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, directors Sam Peckinpah and John Huston, and the filming of The Last Picture Show and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest remain some of the finest writing ever done on popular culture. To introduce Grover Lewis to a new generation of readers and collect his best work under one cover, this anthology contains articles he wrote for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Playboy, Texas Monthly, and New West, as well as excerpts from his unfinished novel The Code of the West and his incomplete memoir Goodbye If You Call That Gone and poems from the volume I'll Be There in the Morning If I Live. Jan Reid and W. K. Stratton have selected and arranged the material around themes that preoccupied Lewis throughout his life—movies, music, and loss. The editors' biographical introduction, the foreword by Dave Hickey, and a remembrance by Robert Draper discuss how Lewis's early struggles to escape his working-class, anti-intellectual Texas roots for the world of ideas in books and movies made him a natural proponent of the counterculture that he chronicled so brilliantly. They also pay tribute to Lewis's groundbreaking talent as a stylist, whose unique voice deserves to be more widely known by today's readers.

The Wake of War: Encounters in Iraq and Afghanistan


Anne Nivat - 2005
    The acclaimed journalist shares her experiences traveling in both Iraq and Afghanistan after the outbreak of war in those countries, sharing the conversations she had with teachers, political leaders, engineers, and ex-soldiers.

Journalism: Critical Issues


Stuart Allan - 2005
    Drawing together an exciting selection of original essays from journalism, cultural studies and media studies, this text highlights several of the most significant topics and debates in this field. "Journalism" is organized to address a series of themes pertinent to the ongoing conceptual development of news media studies around the globe, with a particular focus on work conducted in the United States and Britain. An introductory chapter by the editor sets the scene for the discussion by providing a concise, up-to-date overview of several key issues relating to the study of news and journalism.

Peace Journalism


Annabel McGoldrick - 2005
    They teach Peace Journalism in departments of Journalism, and Peace Studies at several universities. They have led training workshops for editors and reporters in many countries, including the UK, USA, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, the Middle East and the Caucasus.

On the Wrong Line: How Ideology and Incompetence Wrecked Britain's Railways


Christian Wolmar - 2005
    

Where the Southern Cross the Yellow Dog: On Writers and Writing


Louis D. Rubin Jr. - 2005
    Rubin, Jr., discusses writing and writers based on his own experience as a writer, editor, teacher, and publisher. Only ten years old when he wrote his first article for publication and eighty-one when he completed the preface to this book, Rubin skillfully incorporates more than seventy years of knowledge and experience into this comprehensive and highly readable work.The title essay, which involves a railroad crossing in Mississippi, a painting, a novel by Eudora Welty, and a comment on language and image by Walker Percy, is an effort by Rubin to come to grips with a problem that has plagued him for years: what is “Southern” about Southern literature, and how does that Southernness figure in the literary imagination of its practitioners? Most of his essays deal with various problems and possibilities characterizing the American literary scene today: the literary uses of memory, writer’s block, the nature of place in fiction, the teaching of writers and the presence of writers on campuses, the condition of poetry today, sports writing, authorial intent in fiction, how nonfiction bolsters fiction, the parlous state of literary publishing, and other matters of cultural importance.Among the authors whose works figure in the book are Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Thomas Wolfe, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Flannery O’Connor, Stendhal, Mark Twain, Henry James, A. J. Liebling, Shelby Foote, William Wordsworth, Herman Melville, and Ernest Hemingway. The book concludes with a look at today’s literary situation, a diagnosis of how it got where it is, and some recommendations for rescuing it, inspired in part by the author’s failed attempt to buck the trend by founding Algonquin Books. Scholars and students of American literature, especially Southern literature, are sure to find much of value in these informative and inspirational essays from a dedicated and distinguished student of Southern letters.

To Build A Nation: Collected Writings 1975 1999


Bruce Jesson - 2005
    For the first time, his best work has been collected and edited to provide this extraordinary overview, from the rise of Robert Muldoon to the turn of the 21st century. These articles, columns and essays build to create a kind of history in instalments, covering all the great issues of the times, from political and economic revolution to the search for cultural and national identity. Trenchantly critical of the political establishment, left or right, Jesson was that rarest of writers - an intellectual with the common touch, able to convey complex truths with great clarity and precision. Absorbing and provocative, Jesson's words remain as relevant today as whey they were first written.