Now, Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat--the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.

    A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped.Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.

    HENRY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM Simply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is—in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable. Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway station to play for spare change? Would anyone even notice? The answer was no. Weingarten’s story went viral, becoming a widely referenced lesson about life lived too quickly. Other classic stories—the one about “The Great Zucchini,” a wildly popular but personally flawed children’s entertainer; the search for the official “Armpit of America”; a profile of the typical American nonvoter—all of them reveal as much about their readers as they do their subjects.

    The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi here unravels the whole fiendish story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications of the rise of the grifters. He traces the movement’s origins to the cult of Ayn Rand and her most influential—and possibly weirdest—acolyte, Alan Greenspan, and offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals that decided the winners and losers in the government bailouts. He uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world, and he shows how finance dominates politics, from the story of investment bankers auctioning off America’s infrastructure to an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform—a battle the true reformers lost. Finally, he tells the story of Goldman Sachs, the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing, and scathingly funny account yet written of the ongoing political and financial crisis in America. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in this country, and the profound consequences for us all.

    As one reviewer put it, 'Rawnsley's ability to unearth revelation at the highest level of government may leave you suspecting that there are bugs in the vases at Number 10'. "The End of the Party" is packed with more astonishing revelations as Rawnsley takes up the New Labour story from the day of its second election victory in 2001. There are riveting inside accounts of all the key events from 9/11 and the Iraq War to the financial crisis and the parliamentary expenses scandal; and entertaining portraits of the main players as Rawnsley takes us through the triumphs and tribulations of New Labour as well as the astonishing feuds and reconciliations between Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and confidential conversations with those at the heart of power, Andrew Rawnsley provides the definitive account of the rise and fall of New Labour.

    The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, willfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade's hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.This is an underground economy in which a sex slave can be bought for the price of a gun, but Cacho's powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity makes it impossible to ignore the terrible human cost of this lucrative exchange.Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the colossal scope of its enquiry, and for the tenacious bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.

    This travel book touches on one of the most fraught parts of the globe at a different moment in its history.

    platoon, assigned to an outpost in the Korengal Valley--an area considered one of the most dangerous Afghan postings in the war against the Taliban--but it is as much about love and male vulnerability as it is about bravery and war. Embedded with writer Sebastian Junger, and shooting over the course of one year, photographer Tim Hetherington made a series of images that prove surprisingly tender in their depiction of camaraderie and vulnerability (among the most moving is a series of the platoon sleeping). Alongside revealing interviews with Hetherington's subjects and an introduction by Junger (with whom Hetherington co-directed the award-winning film Restrepo, about the work of the battalion), the book is also illustrated with graphics of the tattoos the soldiers gave each other in the camp. The title Infidel is taken from the tattoo the men adopted as a badge of their comradeship. Warm, moving and full of humor, this book is a tribute to the "rough men ready to do violence on our behalf" and a provocative contribution to the documentation of war in our time.Tim Hetherington was born in Liverpool, U.K., and took up photojournalism after studying literature at Oxford University. Five years spent living in Liberia resulted in the book Long Story Bit By Bit: Liberia Retold (2009), and awards for his photojournalism include World Press Photo of the Year 2007 (for his dramatic war photography from Afghanistan), the Rory Peck Award for Features (2008) and an Alfred I duPont Award for excellence in broadcast journalism while on assignment with Sebastian Junger for ABC News (2009). As a filmmaker, he has worked as both a cameraman and director/producer. Restrepo won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. He is based in New York and is a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair magazine.

    I’d been waiting for months to hear from them...’ In early 2010, Arundhati Roy travelled into the forests of Central India, homeland to millions of indigenous people, dreamland to some of the world’s biggest mining corporations. The result is this powerful and unprecedented report from the heart of an unfolding revolution. About the Author : Arundhati Roy is the author of The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997. Three volumes of her non-fiction writing, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire and Listening to Grasshoppers, were published in 2001, 2005 and 2009 respectively. The Shape of the Beast, a collection of her interviews, was published in 2008. Arundhati Roy lives in New Delhi.

    To protect him, he hired Nick du Toit, a former South African Defence Force soldier who had fought in conflicts across Africa for over three decades. What follows is an incredible behind-the-scenes account of the Liberian rebels — known as the LURD — as they attempt to seize control of the country from government troops led by President Charles Taylor. In this gripping narrative, James Brabazon paints a brilliant portrait of the chaos that tore West Africa apart: nations run by warlords and kleptocrats, rebels fighting to displace them, ordinary people caught in the crossfire — and everywhere adventurers and mercenaries operating in war's dark shadows. It is a brutally honest book about what it takes to be a journalist, survivor, and friend in this morally corrosive crucible.

    . . set in one of the world’s most exotic locales. After her company is bought out by a tabloid magazine, career-driven journalist Ava Cole is less than thrilled to be covering celebrity fluff stories—even if her first assignment sends her to Aruba for the high-profile wedding of pop star India Wright. Maybe a solo excursion far from home will help her forget about her crazy family and her suddenly ex-boyfriend, who seems to have trouble with two simple words: “I do.” It doesn’t take long for the steamy island atmosphere to work its magic, and Ava finds herself enjoying a sexy flirtation with Cliff, the photographer shooting the singer’s nuptials. Just as their attraction heats up, Ava uncovers a bombshell of blackmail, deadly deceptions, and international intrigue that will all but destroy India Wright. With ominous threats closing in after the story leaks, whom can Ava trust with her explosive information, her heart—and her life?

    Oriana Fallaci was granted access to countless world leaders and politicians throughout her remarkable career. Considering herself a writer rather than a journalist, she was never shy about sharing her opinions of her interview subjects. Her most memorable interviews—some translated into English for the first time—appear in this collection, including those with Ariel Sharon, Yassir Arafat, the former Shah of Iran, Lech Walesa, the Dalai Lama, Robert Kennedy, and many others. Also featured is the famous 1972 interview in which she succeeded in getting Henry Kissinger to call Vietnam a "useless war" and to describe himself as "a cowboy." To this day he calls the Fallaci interview "the most disastrous conversation I ever had with the press."

    The paper's culture editor, Flemming Rose, defended the decision to print the 12 drawings, and he quickly came to play a central part in the debate about the limitations to freedom of speech in the 21st century. Since then, Rose has visited universities and think tanks and participated in conferences and debates around the globe in order to discuss tolerance and freedom. In The Tyranny of Silence, Flemming Rose writes about the people and experiences that have influenced the way he views the world and his understanding of the crisis, including meetings with dissidents from the former Soviet Union and ex-Muslims living in Europe. He provides a personal account of an event that has shaped the debate about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy and how to coexist in a world that is increasingly multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic.

    Millions of listeners hear arresting, intimate storytelling from an ever-widening array of producers on programs including This American Life, StoryCorps, and Radio Lab; online through such sites as Transom, the Public Radio Exchange, Hearing Voices, and Soundprint; and through a growing collection of podcasts.Reality Radio celebrates today's best audio documentary work by bringing together some of the most influential and innovative practitioners from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In these nineteen essays, documentary artists tell--and demonstrate, through stories and transcripts--how they make radio the way they do, and why.Whether the contributors to the volume call themselves journalists, storytellers, even audio artists--and although their essays are just as diverse in content and approach--all use sound to tell true stories, artfully.Contributors: Jad AbumradJay Allisondamali ayoJohn BiewenEmily BoteinChris BrookesScott CarrierKatie DavisSherre DeLysLena Eckert-ErdheimIra GlassAlan HallNatalie KestecherThe Kitchen SistersMaria MartinKaren MichelRick MoodyJoe RichmanDmae RobertsStephen SmithSandy Tolan

    Buckley Jr. was the leading figure in the conservative movement in America. The magazine he founded in 1955, National Review, brought together writers representing every strand of conservative thought, and refined those ideas over the decades that followed. Buckley’s own writings were a significant part of this development. He was not a theoretician but a popularizer, someone who could bring conservative ideas to a vast audience through dazzling writing and lively wit.Culled from millions of published words spanning nearly sixty years, Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations offers Buckley’s commentary on the American and international scenes, in areas ranging from Kremlinology to rock music. The subjects are widely varied, but there are common threads linking them all: a love for the Western tradition and its American manifestation; the belief that human beings thrive best in a free society; the conviction that such a society is worth defending at all costs; and an appreciation for the quirky individuality that free people inevitably develop.

    A collection of stories from Vanity Fair magazine about the current financial crisis by some of the country’s best business journalists, including Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar’s Poker), Bryan Burrough (Barbarians at the Gate), and Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down), edited by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, and with an introduction by Cullen Murphy (Are We Rome?).

    He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide. In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political. This is the story of his life, a life lived large.

    From giants like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland to lesser-known artists like Jeri Southern and Joe Mooney, they have created a body of work that continues to please and inspire. Here is the most extensive biographical and critical survey of these singers ever written, as well as an essential guide to the Great American Songbook and those who shaped the way it has been sung. The music crosses from jazz to pop and back again, from the songs of Irving Berlin and W. C. Handy through Stephen Sondheim and beyond, bringing together straightforward jazz and pop singers (Billie Holiday, Perry Como); hybrid artists who moved among genres and combined them (Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé); the leading men and women of Broadway and Hollywood (Ethel Merman, Al Jolson); yesterday’s vaudeville and radio stars (Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor); and today’s cabaret artists and hit-makers (Diana Krall, Michael Bublé). Friedwald has also written extended pieces on the most representative artists of five significant genres that lie outside the songbook: Bessie Smith (blues), Mahalia Jackson (gospel), Hank Williams (country and western), Elvis Presley (rock ’n’ roll), and Bob Dylan (folk-rock). Friedwald reconsiders the personal stories and professional successes and failures of all these artists, their songs, and their performances, appraising both the singers and their music by balancing his opinions with those of fellow musicians, listeners, and critics.  This magisterial reference book—ten years in the making—will delight and inform anyone with a passion for the iconic music of America, which continues to resonate throughout our popular culture.

    At age fifteen he became a sports reporter for his Ocean City High School newspaper; four years later, as sports editor of the University of Alabama's Crimson-White, he began to employ devices more common in fiction, such as establishing a scene with minute details-a technique that would later make him famous.Later, as a sports reporter for the New York Times, Talese was drawn to individuals at poignant and vulnerable moments rather than to the spectacle of sports. Boxing held special appeal, and his Esquire pieces on Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson in decline won praise, as would his later essay Ali in Havana, chronicling Muhammad Ali's visit to Fidel Castro. His profile of Joe DiMaggio, The Silent Season of a Hero, perfectly captured the great player in his remote retirement, and displayed Talese's journalistic brilliance, for it grew out of his on-the-ground observation of the Yankee Clipper rather than from any interview. More recently, Talese traveled to China to track down and chronicle the female soccer player who missed a penalty kick that would have won China the World Cup.Chronicling Talese's writing over more than six decades, from high school and college columns to his signature adult journalism- and including several never-before-published pieces (such as one on sports anthropology), a new introduction by the author, and notes on the background of each piece-The Silent Season of a Hero is a unique and indispensable collection for sports fans and those who enjoy the heights of journalism.

    Lamb locates Hemingway's art in literary historical contexts and explains what he learned from earlier artists, including Edgar Allan Poe, Paul C�zanne, Henry James, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Stephen Crane, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. Examining how Hemingway developed this inheritance, Lamb insightfully charts the evolution of the unique style and innovative techniques that would forever change the nature of short fiction.Art Matters opens with an analysis of the authorial effacement Hemingway learned from Maupassant and Chekhov, followed by fresh perspectives on the author's famous use of concision and omission. Redefining literary impressionism and expressionism as alternative modes for depicting modern consciousness, Lamb demonstrates how Hemingway and Willa Cather learned these techniques from Crane and made them the foundation of their respective aesthetics. After examining the development of Hemingway's art of focalization, he clarifies what Hemingway really learned from Stein and delineates their different uses of repetition. Turning from techniques to formal elements, Art Matters anatomizes Hemingway's story openings and endings, analyzes how he created an entirely unprecedented role for fictional dialogue, explores his methods of characterization, and categorizes his settings in the fifty-three stories that comprise his most important work in the genre.A major contribution to Hemingway scholarship and to the study of modernist fiction, Art Matters shows exactly how Hemingway's craft functions and argues persuasively for the importance of studies of articulated technique to any meaningful understanding of fiction and literary history. The book also develops vital new ways of understanding the short story genre as Lamb constructs a critical apparatus for analyzing the short story, introduces to a larger audience ideas taken from practicing storywriters, theorists, and critics, and coins new terms and concepts that enrich our understanding of the field.

    In researching England's Dreaming, Savage conducted hundreds of hours of interviews of which only a fraction made it into the finished book. Now, in The England's Dreaming Tapes, Savage makes available for the first time the full, uncut, sensational story behind the cultural moment that was punk. Here is the story of a generation that changed the world in just a few months in 1976, as told by the scene's major figures: all four original Sex Pistols as well as Joe Strummer, Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, Siouxsie Sioux, Viv Albertine, Adam Ant, Lee Black Childers, Howard Devoto, Pete Shelley, Syl Sylvain, Debbie Wilson, Tony Wilson, Jah Wobble, and many others. Together, they offer a sweeping history of the late 1960s and the 1970s-not just the era's music, but also its radical politics, social issues, fashion, and culture. An invaluable source of information about a movement that has become obscured by myth, these vivid, unvarnished interviews were conducted when punk was only a decade old. In many cases, this was the first time that the subjects had talked about the period. The interviews describe the founding of the Sex Pistols; 430 King's Road, site of the legendary boutique Sex, which helped establish the punk aesthetic; punk rock New York; the cultural landscapes of London and its suburbs; the writers who covered punk; and the Manchester music scene centered around Factory Records. With The England's Dreaming Tapes, Savage gives us the first and final word on the music, fashion, and attitude that defined this influential and incendiary era.

    Nixon's operatives are ordered to "stop Anderson at all costs"--permanently. Across the street from the White House, they huddle in a hotel basement to conspire. Should they try "Aspirin Roulette" and break into Anderson's home to plant a poisoned pill in one of his medicine bottles? Could they smear LSD on the journalist's steering wheel, so that he would absorb it through his skin, lose control of his car, and crash? Or stage a routine-looking mugging, making Anderson appear to be one more fatal victim of Washington's notorious street crime?"Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture" recounts not only the disturbing story of an unprecedented White House conspiracy to assassinate a journalist, but also the larger tale of the bitter quarter-century battle between the postwar era's most embattled politician and its most reviled newsman. The struggle between Nixon and Anderson included bribery, blackmail, forgery, spying, and burglary as well as the White House murder plot. Their vendetta symbolized and accelerated the growing conflict between the government and the press, a clash that would long outlive both men.Mark Feldstein traces the arc of this confrontation between a vindictive president and a flamboyant, crusading muckraker who rifled through garbage and swiped classified papers in pursuit of his prey--stoking the paranoia in Nixon that would ultimately lead to his ruin. The White House plot to poison Anderson, Feldstein argues, is a metaphor for the poisoned political atmosphere that would follow, and the toxic sensationalism that contaminates contemporary media discourse.Melding history and biography, "Poisoning the Press" unearths significant new information from more than two hundred interviews and thousands of declassified documents and tapes. This is a chronicle of political intrigue and the true price of power for politicians and journalists alike. The result--Washington's modern scandal culture--was Richard Nixon's ultimate revenge.

    Curious and funny, tender and scathing, O'Faolain's columns were never less than trenchant and were always passionate. "I was blinded by the habit of translating everything into personal terms," she writes apologetically, but this is the power of her journalism. Through the prism of casual, everyday encounters, O'Faolain presses her subject, reaching beyond the prompting of the moment to transcend topicality. The result is a cumulative historical narrative, an inadvertent chronicle of a transformed Ireland by one of its sharpest observers and canniest critics.Praise for A Radiant Life:"This book is a gift." -The Boston Globe

    The centerpiece of the collection is his signature work, “The Death and Life of Dith Pran,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine. This became the foundation of Roland Joffé’s acclaimed film The Killing Fields (1984), which explored the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia during the late 1970s. Although Schanberg may be best known for his work on Cambodia, he also reported on the India-Pakistan war that ended Pakistan’s brutal attempt to crush the Bangladesh freedom movement in the 1970s. His striking coverage of the Vietnam conflict recounts Hanoi’s fierce offensive in 1972 that almost succeeded. Years later, citing official documents and other hard evidence that a large number of American POWs were never returned by Hanoi, Schanberg criticized the national press for ignoring these facts and called for Washington to release documents that had been covered up since 1973. As the media critic for the Village Voice, Schanberg offered a unique and searing viewpoint on Iraq, which he called America’s “strangest war.” His criticism of the Bush administration’s secrecy brings his war reportage into the present and presents a vigorous critique of what he considers a devious and destructive presidency. Beyond the Killing Fields is an important work by one of America’s foremost journalists.

    Other migrants tell of the corpses they pass—bodies that are never recovered or counted.Crossing With the Virgin collects stories heard from migrants about these treacherous treks—firsthand accounts told to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group that seeks to prevent such unnecessary deaths by providing these travelers with medical aid, water, and food. Other books have dealt with border crossing; this is the first to share stories of immigrant suffering at its worst told by migrants encountered on desert trails. The Samaritans write about their encounters to show what takes place on a daily basis along the border: confrontations with Border Patrol agents at checkpoints reminiscent of wartime; children who die in their parents’ desperate bid to reunite families; migrants terrorized by bandits; and hovering ghost-like above nearly every crossing, the ever-present threat of death. These thirty-nine stories are about the migrants, but they also tell how each individual author became involved with this work. As such, they offer not only a window into the migrants’ plight but also a look at the challenges faced by volunteers in sometimes compromising situations—and at their own humanizing process.Crossing With the Virgin raises important questions about underlying assumptions and basic operations of border enforcement, helping readers see past political positions to view migrants as human beings. It will touch your heart as surely as it reassures you that there are people who still care about their fellow man.

    As a correspondent for the International News Service, the Associated Press, and later for the New York Times, Seymour Topping documented on the ground the tumultuous events during the Chinese Civil War, the French Indochina War, and the American retreat from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In this riveting narrative, Topping chronicles his extraordinary experiences covering the East-West struggle in Asia and Eastern Europe from 1946 into the 1980s, taking us beyond conventional historical accounts to provide a fresh, first-hand perspective on American triumphs and defeats during the Cold War era.At the close of World War II, Topping -- who had served as an infantry officer in the Pacific -- reported for the International News Service from Beijing and Mao's Yenan stronghold before joining the Associated Press in Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek's capital. He covered the Chinese Civil War for the next three years, often interviewing Nationalist and Communist commanders in combat zones. Crossing Nationalist lines, Topping was captured by Communist guerrillas and tramped for days over battlefields to reach the People's Liberation Army as it advanced on Nanking. The sole correspondent on the battlefield during the decisive Battle of the Huai-Hai, which sealed Mao's victory, Topping later scored a world-wide exclusive as the first journalist to report the fall of the capital.In 1950, Topping opened the Associated Press bureau in Saigon, becoming the first American correspondent in Vietnam. In 1951, John F. Kennedy, then a young congressman on a fact-finding visit to Saigon, sought out Topping for a briefing. Assignments in London and West Berlin followed, then Moscow and Hong Kong for the New York Times. During those years Topping reported on the Chinese intervention in the Korean conflict, Mao's Cultural Revolution and its preceding internal power struggle, the Chinese leader's monumental ideological split with Nikita Khrushchev, the French Indochina War, America's Vietnam War, and the genocides in Cambodia and Indonesia. He stood in the Kremlin with a vodka-tilting Khrushchev on the night the Cuban missile crisis ended and interviewed Fidel Castro in Havana on its aftermath.Throughout this captivating chronicle, Topping also relates the story of his marriage to Audrey Ronning, a world-renowned photojournalist and writer and daughter of the Canadian ambassador to China. As the couple traveled from post to post reporting on some of the biggest stories of the century in Asia and Eastern Europe, they raised five daughters. In an epilogue, Topping cites lessons to be learned from the Asia wars which could serve as useful guides for American policymakers in dealing with present-day conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.From China to Indochina, Burma to Korea and beyond, Topping did more than report the news; he became involved in international diplomacy, enabling him to gain extraordinary insights. In On the Front Lines of the Cold War, Topping shares these insights, providing an invaluable eyewitness account of some of the pivotal moments in modern history.

    Gracefully written and thoroughly researched, his biography is easily the best we have on this remarkable man who so profoundly influenced the worlds of politics and publishing.” — David Nasaw, author of Andrew CarnegiePulitzer is James McGrath Morris’s definitive biography of the Jewish Hungarian immigrant who created the modern American mass media—the first comprehensive biography of this remarkable historical icon in more than 40 years.

    Peaks are flattened and valleys are filled as the coal industry levels thousands of acres of forest to access the coal, in the process turning the forest into scrubby shrublands and poisoning the water. This is dangerous and environmentally devastating work, but as Rebecca R. Scott shows in Removing Mountains, the issues at play are vastly complicated.In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment. But Removing Mountains takes the conversation in a new direction, telling the stories of the businesspeople, miners, and families who believe they depend on the industry to survive. Scott reveals these southern Appalachian coalfields as a meaningful landscape where everyday practices and representations help shape a community's relationship to the environment.Removing Mountains demonstrates that the paradox that faces this community-forced to destroy their land to make a wage-raises important questions related not only to the environment but also to American national identity, place, and white working-class masculinity.

    The pieces are animated by his passion for the ordinary and the everyday - from laundry to toothache, from cats to cleaning windows - his love of language, his lyrical observations of the world and above all his humanism."

    There’s a civil war (the world’s longest running, in fact) raging between the government and ethnic rebels. Much of the United States’ heroin comes from there. And there’s the small matter that America helped make it all possible with overt funding and the CIA’s very first secret war. Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this, because Burma is a country nearly shut out from the rest of the world, with the only footage of the carnage coming via groups of young, tough, booze-loving refugees who run into war zones to collect it. And with these refugees is where we find Mac McClelland embedded in her staggering debut, For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question. McClelland weaves a narrative that is part investigative journalism, part popular history, and part memoir of a Midwestern, twentysomething girl living with refugee activists on the Burma-Thailand border. Driven by the community McClelland is illegally aiding—a small group of brave young men and women—For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question is an urgent and fascinating look at a weary conflict, told by a bright, new voice.

    After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary’s mantra of “Turn on, tune in, and drop out” and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied “Maui Wowie”), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood’s most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group’s nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell’s Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group’s surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, Orange Sunshine explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia.

    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.

    He crisscrossed the Southwest in search of wildlife driven to the brink. This region, with its unique and complex issues provides a snapshot of issues facing endangered species.

    Winner, Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association, 2011What do you call a place where people are tortured and murdered and buried in the backyard of a nice, middle-class condo? Where police work for the drug cartels? Where the meanings of words such as "border" and "crime" and "justice" are emptying out into the streets and flowing down into the sewers? You call it Juárez or, better yet, Dreamland.Realizing that merely reporting the facts cannot capture the massive disintegration of society that is happening along the border, Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs use nonfiction and sgraffito drawings to depict the surreality that is Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Starting from an incident in which a Mexican informant for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security murdered a man while U.S. agents listened in by cell phone—and did nothing to intervene—Bowden forcefully and poetically describes the breakdown of all order in Juárez as the power of the drug industry outstrips the power of the state. Alice Leora Briggs's drawings—reminiscent of Northern Renaissance engraving and profoundly disquieting—intensify the reality of this place where atrocities happen daily and no one, neither citizens nor governments, openly acknowledges them.With the feel of a graphic novel, the look of an illuminated medieval manuscript, and the harshness of a police blotter, Dreamland captures the routine brutality, resilient courage, and rapacious daily commerce along the U.S.-Mexico border.

    They show how the troubles of a working-class community in Cleveland or a newly built suburb of Miami became an international financial crisis, explaining the complex new forms of credit that came into being because of financial deregulation, and how they created an economic whirlpool. From there they discuss how, over the same time span, a smaller and smaller group of people came to control a larger and larger percentage of the world’s money — a result of rising inequality that, combined with the shortage of affordable housing, a decline in real wages, and our unwavering belief in an �ownership society,” impelled poor people into debt. Tobocman and Laursen conclude with a consideration of a restructured financial system and a look toward a culture of sustainability — one that covets real wealth in the form of security, meaningful work, and community.

    During those sensational few days, regular citizens stood by helplessly and watched as Iceland’s three large commercial banks folded and Iceland’s currency, the króna, plummeted in value, eventually becoming worthless outside of Iceland. Fear and uncertainty permeated Icelandic society during those strange days, extending to every nook and cranny of daily life. People worried whether or not they would have a job the next day, whether there would be food in the shops the following week, whether their children’s playschools would stay open, whether Iceland would retain its sovereignty, and everything else in between. Nothing was certain, and from one day to the next everything that had seemed hands-down solid seemed fleeting and unpredictable. No one was exempt. In a small nation such as Iceland it is impossible not to feel the impact of such a monumental event on your own skin. Each and every person had to completely re-assess his or her own worldview. We believed our society was virtually free of corruption and that an unwritten code of ethics was honoured by most people. Yet suddenly the veil was torn away and we saw a society rife with corruption, cronyism, incompetence and criminality – qualities most of us had associated with republics known for their banana production. Only this was our society. Living Inside the Meltdown is the first published collection of interviews with ordinary people about Iceland’s economic meltdown. In this selection of candid interviews, ten individuals share their thoughts, feelings and experiences of living through those extraordinary days. How did a police officer feel who had to take a stand against protesters during the ensuing political crisis, which culminated in the Kitchenware Revolution. Did he sympathize with them, or was he opposed? Did he want to join the protesters? And looking back, how does he view this time? How did someone who worked in a bank feel going to work on the day the bank melted down? What was the atmosphere like? What was her workday like? What about those people who were students abroad when currency controls were suddenly implemented and who were cut off from their financial source? Some of them had small children – how did they cope in a foreign country with no access to money? What about small business owners, who suddenly had to pay for orders up front because no one trusted them? And what was it like for foreigners who lived in Iceland and who had a limited understanding of what was going on. Were they afraid? From where did they get their news? The answers to those questions, plus many, many more, may be found in this book. “If you take anything away from this review, let it be this: You must read this book. [...] If you are currently living through the recession (this goes for people anywhere in the world, but in particular, in Iceland), you will be able to share in the common experience of these people’s stories. [...] The book isn’t a collection of rants, nor is it an all out sob-fest, but rather gives accounts on the same topic, the collapse, each with its own story and insight.” – Iceland Review

    Best known for his wry and incisive takes on American life and politics, Garry Trudeau is among the world’s most widely read cartoonists. Trudeau began shaping Doonesbury as an undergraduate contributor to the Yale Daily News in 1968.Today, the strip is syndicated to a daily readership of nearly 100 million.Trudeau’s work has been anthologized before, but this is the first book to assess the art of the comic strip and the ways that Trudeau’s iconic style has evolved over the past four decades. Brian Walker, an expert on the history of comics, sheds light on Trudeau’s early influences as well as on his creative process, from research to pencil layouts to finished artwork. In addition to revealing how Doonesbury is crafted each week, the book also examines Trudeau’s magazine illustrations, animation drawings, posters, and product designs, as well as rare and previously unpublished works. Walker’s historical text is complemented by insightful commentary by Trudeau and his collaborators, Don Carleton, George Corsillo, and David Stanford, making this book appealing not only to Doonesbury’s many fans but also to those looking for an approach to the work of a master comic strip artist.

    The BBC built a studio to provide its own avant-garde dramatic productions with experimental sounds neither music norsound effect. Quickly, however, a popular kind of electronic music emerged in the form of quirky jingles, signature tunes such as Doctor Who, and incidental music for hundreds of programs. These influential sounds and styles, heard by millions of listeners over decades of operation on televisionand radio, have served as a primary inspiration for the use of electronic instruments in popular music.Using in-depth research in the studio's archives and papers, this book tells the history of the many engineers, composers, directors, and producers behind the studio to trace the shifting perception towards electronic music in Britain. Combining historical discussion of the people and instruments inthe workshop with analysis of specific works, Louis Niebur creates a new model for understanding how the Radiophonic Workshop fits into the larger history of electronic music.

    Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 34. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: 'Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream' is a book by the American writer and journalist Hunter S. Thompson, originally published in 1990. This third installment of the Gonzo Papers is a chronologically arranged selection of stories, letters, journals and reporting, allowing readers to see how Thompson's brand of "new journalism" has evolved over the years. It is a collection of Dr. Thompson's essays and articles. This collection is mostly made up of pieces from the Reagan era, but there are also some older stories, including excerpts from his unfinished first novel, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, which was not published on its own until 1998. To David McCumber and Rosalie Sorrells: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -HST Because Songs of the Doomed is a collection of essays, short stories, and hard-to-find newspaper articles written by Thompson during his extensive career, the book is separated into five distinct sections, each named after a decade the writer himself survived: The Fifties: Last Rumble in Fat City, The Sixties: What the Hell? It's Only Rock and Roll..., The Seventies: Reaping the Whirlwind, Riding the Tiger, The Eighties: How Much Money Do You Have?, and Welcome to the Nineties: Welcome to Jail, respectively. Having the essays, stories, and articles included in the book in order by decade allows readers to take an unlikely look into how the author's style (and personal habits) changed over the course of his career. Of course, it also allo...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=867694

    Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and -women. This volume includes his best recent work—short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections. From Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and Quincy Jones, Hentoff brings the jazz greats to life and traces their art to gospel, blues, and many other forms of American music. At the Jazz Band Ball also includes Hentoff’s keen, cosmopolitan observations on a wide range of issues. The book shows how jazz and education are a vital partnership, how free expression is the essence of liberty, and how social justice issues like health care and strong civil rights and liberties keep all the arts—and all members of society—strong.

    Commentary was their magazine; the place where they and other politically sympathetic intellectuals--Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, James Baldwin, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick and many others--shared new work, explored ideas, and argued with each other.Founded by the offspring of immigrants, Commentary began life as a voice for the marginalized and a feisty advocate for civil rights and economic justice. But just as American culture moved in its direction, it began--inexplicably to some--to veer right, becoming the voice of neoconservativism and defender of the powerful.This lively history, based on unprecedented access to the magazine's archives and dozens of original interviews, provocatively explains that shift while recreating the atmosphere of some of the most exciting decades in American intellectual life.

    Barney gambled, hung with high-toned women and hillbillies, and played the horses! This novel-length, thrilling, and laugh-packed story was about Google's racehorse Sparkplug and delighted a nation in the 1920s as they will you. Featuring a revealing introduction by renowned comics historian Craig Yoe, this strikingly designed hardbound book collects the most famous acclaimed adventures of Barney Google, complete with rare, unpublished art, photos, and ephemera in glorious color.

    The book is fully cross-referenced and interlinked with the website, which offers the chance to test your learning and send in questions for industry experts to answer in their masterclasses.Split into three levels - getting started, building proficiency and professional standards - this book builds on the knowledge attained in each part, and ensures that skills are introduced one step at a time until professional competency is achieved. This three stage structure means it can be used from initial to advanced level to learn the key skill areas of video, audio, text, and pictures and how to combine them to create multimedia packages. Skills covered include:writing news reports, features, email bulletins and blogs building a website using a content management system measuring the success of your website or blog shooting, cropping, editing and captioning pictures recording, editing and publishing audio reports and podcasts shooting, editing and streaming video and creating effective packages creating breaking news tickers and using Twitter using and encouraging user generated content interviewing and conducting advanced online research subediting, proofreading and headlining, including search engine optimisation geo-tagging, geo-coding and geo-broadcasting.Website access is free when the book or ebook is purchased. The registration key is on the final page of all editions of the book and ebook and is also on the inside front cover of the paperback edition.

    Folker Hanusch provides a historical overview of death in the news, looks at the conditions of production, content and reception, and also analyzes emerging trends in the representation of death online.

    27 pages of summaries and analysis on The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad.This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

    Has she found her heart's desire-a passionate, lust-crazed lover who wants only her? Always and forever?Rhys can't keep his big hands off the curvy shopkeeper. Her smile captivates him and her lush body has him behaving like a he-man Neanderthal. Heated glances and sizzling touches turn into a hot office interlude and wild, break-the-bed sex that only makes him want her more. Bella is all the magic he needs.Whirlwind Affair by Francesca Hawley Red Stilettos, Book Two.While a stand-alone, books are best enjoyed if read in order.Erika Bergstrom is shopping in an upscale adult boutique when handsome Rodrigo Torbellino asks for help finding a gift. Just her luck! As he flirts with her, she discovers he's shopping for a bridal shower gift for a friend, not a lover. So when he asks her to model a beautiful negligee then seduces her in the dressing room, Erika gives in to her urge for a wild new experience...a one-night stand.The next morning, Erika's body is sated from pleasure. Rigo obtains a promise she'll call him and tells her that if she doesn't, he'll find her. She's intrigued and thrilled with his obvious interest until she discovers Rigo is the head of the company her brother wants the family to partner with, so she doesn't contact him. A month passes. When they meet again, the fire between them burns just as bright as ever, but does Rigo want the business deal or her?Can the red stilettos live up to their legend to provide the wearer with her heart's desire?Dear Sexy Lexie by Ashlyn Chase Red Stilettos, Book ThreeWhile a stand-alone, this book is best enjoyed in series order.Some women should take their own advice...No-nonsense, thirty-nine-year-old Lexie Burns pens an advice column-Letters to Sexy Lexie-that delivers common sense with a dose of humor and a verbal slap upside the head. Tyler Black, a younger, drop-dead gorgeous cop, has had it with empty-headed, superficial women. In Lexie, he sees the kind of intelligent woman with whom he could build a solid relationship-if he can convince her to acknowledge his existence.With the help of some magical stilettos, Tyler might get his woman...and Lexie might get a desperately needed slap upside the libido.Bad, Bad Girlfriend by Delilah Devlin Book Four in the Red Stilettos series.Expect magic when one determined woman dons a legendary pair of red stilettos and bares body and heart to get her man's attention...Jolene's a big, beautiful woman with an even bigger heart. But she's become her police officer boyfriend's favorite doormat and that's so not working for her. It's time for a little conversation, time to tell Mr. Happy Pants to "pee or get off the pot".Gabriel has seen what his profession does to marriages. He's not willing to risk that kind of heartbreak. Besides, he likes what he has with Jolene. The woman is sex personified. So when Jolie tells him she won't see him anymore if he's not willing to commit, he's shocked and angry.With a girlfriend's encouragement and the added confidence a certain pair of red stilettos gives her, Jolene arranges a special show at a strip club to prove to Gabe once and for all that she's more woman than any man can handle, and if he doesn't want the job, then she'll find another lover who does.

    Whether playing the standards or the most experimental piece, it is how a musician handles these notes—fearlessly or safely—that determines the fate of the performance. Howard Reich’s critical writing is similarly unexpected and fearless, and Let Freedom Swing is a collection of the articles from the past three decades that best capture this spirit.Each section of Let Freedom Swing composes a suite, focusing on either a person, place, or scene. Reich gives new life to the standards with his profiles and elegies for such giants as Gershwin, Ellington, and Sinatra. A profile of Louis Armstrong brings out the often angry side of Satchmo but also reveals a more remarkable musician and human being.His open-mindedness makes Reich a particularly astute observer of the experimental and new, from Ornette Coleman to Chicago experimentalist Ken Vandermark. And his observations about street music open our ears to the songs of everyday life. Reich’s fearlessness is evident in his writing about daunting subjects, such as the New Orleans music scene after Katrina, the lost legacy of jazz in Panama, and the complicated legacy of "race music" in America.Howard Reich combines a deep enthusiasm for music, a breadth of knowledge, and an ability to share his world with his readers, and Let Freedom Swing is essential reading for anyone interested in the continuing vitality of jazz, gospel, blues, and American music in general.

    With web 2.0, blogging, huge media conglomerates, 24-hour news-networks, and tight legal frameworks, this introduction investigates the role of journalism in the digital age. With priorities shifting, do journalists still strive for truth or are they solely concerned with 'infotainment' - driven by sales and ratings? This captivating guide explains the history of journalism, its everyday workings, and the ethical dilemmas that modern journalists face.

    After the world's most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and opened to capitalism, many people fell prey to fraudsters who invited them to invest in so-called 'pyramid schemes'. At the start of 1997, these pyramids crumbled one after another causing wide-spread demonstrations and protests. The conflict became increasingly violent, leading to the collapse of the state and of the country's institutions. Prisons were opened, crowds stormed arms depots, and the country was abandoned to anarchy and gang rule. Lubonja has chosen to tell this incredible story through a narrative technique that operates on two levels: a third-person narrator, who describes the large-scale events that made international headlines, and the narrative of Fatos Qorri, the author's alter ego, who describes his own dramatic experiences in a personal diary. The book begins with the synopsis of a novel entitled "The Sugar Boat" that Fatos Qorri intends to write about the spread of a small pyramid scheme luring people to invest supposedly in a sugar business. However, as the major pyramids collapse, real events overtake anything he has imagined and Fatos Qorri finds himself in the midst of a real-life tragedy.

    Gilmore argues that they were the carriers of linguistic restriction, and writers from Frederick Douglass to Stephen Crane wrestled with the demands for silence and circumspection that accompanied the antebellum fear of disunion and the postwar reconciliation between the North and South.   Proposing a radical new interpretation of nineteenth-century American literature, The War on Words examines struggles over permissible and impermissible utterance in works ranging from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” to Henry James’s The Bostonians. Combining historical knowledge with groundbreaking readings of some of the classic texts of the American past, The War on Words places Lincoln’s Cooper Union address in the same constellation as Margaret Fuller’s feminism and Thomas Dixon’s defense of lynching. Arguing that slavery and race exerted coercive pressure on freedom of expression, Gilmore offers here a transformative study that alters our understanding of nineteenth-century literary culture and its fraught engagement with the right to speak.

    Featuring work selected by a panel of judges from more than 14,000 international publication entries, this inspirational volume sets the bar for excellence in journalistic design. Bold, full-color layouts feature the best-of-the-best in news, features, portfolios, visuals, and more, and each entry is accompanied by insightful commentary on the elements that made the piece a standout winner. Every industry professional aspires to one day see his or her work in this book.

    Among French-speaking intelligentsia, graphic narratives were deemed worthy of canonization and critical study decades before the academy and the press in the United States embraced comics.The place that BD holds today, however, belies the contentious political route the art form has traveled. In Drawing France: French Comics and the Republic, author Joel E. Vessels examines the trek of BD from it being considered a fomenter of rebellion, to a medium suitable only for semi-literates, to an impediment to education, and most recently to an art capable of addressing social concerns in mainstream culture.In the mid-1800s, alarmists feared political caricatures might incite the ire of an illiterate working class. To counter this notion, proponents yoked the art to a particular articulation of -Frenchness- based on literacy and reason. With the post-World War II economic upswing, French consumers saw BD as a way to navigate the changes brought by modernization. After bande dessinee came to be understood as a compass for the masses, the government, especially Francois Mitterand's administration, brought comics increasingly into -official- culture. Vessels argues that BD are central to the formation of France's self-image and a self-awareness of what it means to be French.

    Taki's 'High Life' weekly column in 'The Spectator' skewers the absurdities of liberalism, political correctness and the antics of high society.