Breitbart is convinced that too many national stories are slanted by the news media in an unfair way. In Righteous Indignations, Breitbart talks about how one needs to deal with the liberal news world head on. Along the way, he details his early years, working with Matt Drudge, the Huffington Post, and how Breitbart developed his unique style of launching key websites to help get the word out to conservatives all over. A rollicking and controversial read, Breitbart will certainly raise your blood pressure, one way or another.

    Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

    Collected here for the first time, Sacco's darkly funny, revealing reportage confirms his standing as one of the foremost war correspondents working today.In "The Unwanted," Sacco chronicles the detention of Saharan refugees who have washed up on the shores of Malta; "Chechen War, Chechen Women" documents the trial without end of widows in the Caucasus; and "Kushinagar" goes deep into the lives of India's untouchables, who are hanging "onto the planet by their fingernails." Other pieces take Sacco to the smuggling tunnels of Gaza; the trial of Milan Kovacevic, Bosnian warlord, in The Hague; and the darkest chapter in recent American history, Abu Ghraib. And on a mission with American troops—pieces never published in the United States—he confronts the misery and absurdity of the war in Iraq.Among Sacco's most mature, accomplished work, Journalism demonstrates the power of our premier cartoonist to chronicle human experience with a force that often eludes other media.

    But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud. Cogent, sharp, and urgent, this is a no-holds-barred indictment of a profoundly un-American system that sanctions immunity at the top and mercilessness for everyone else.

    Yet writers looking for guidance on reporting and writing true stories have had few places to turn for advice. Now in Storycraft, Jack Hart, a former managing editor of the Oregonian who guided several Pulitzer Prize–winning narratives to publication, delivers what will certainly become the definitive guide to the methods and mechanics of crafting narrative nonfiction.Hart covers what writers in this genre need to know, from understanding story theory and structure, to mastering point of view and such basic elements as scene, action, and character, to drafting, revising, and editing work for publication. Revealing the stories behind the stories, Hart brings readers into the process of developing nonfiction narratives by sharing tips, anecdotes, and recommendations he forged during his decades-long career in journalism. From there, he expands the discussion to other well-known writers to show the broad range of texts, styles, genres, and media to which his advice applies. With examples that draw from magazine essays, book-length nonfiction narratives, documentaries, and radio programs, Storycraft will be an indispensable resource for years to come.

    Thirty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters and drug agents at the problem. But in secret, Washington is confused and divided about what to do. Who are these mysterious figures tearing Mexico apart? they wonder. What is El Narco? El Narco draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's drug cartels and how they have radically transformed in the last decade. El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands from bullet-ridden barrios to marijuana-growing mountains. And it has created paramilitary death squads with tens of thousands of men-at-arms from Guatemala to the Texas border. Journalist Ioan Grillo has spent a decade in Mexico reporting on the drug wars from the front lines. This piercing book joins testimonies from inside the cartels with firsthand dispatches and unsparing analysis. The devastation may be south of the Rio Grande, El Narco shows, but America is knee-deep in this conflict.

     In Believing Is Seeing Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris turns his eye to the nature of truth in photography. In his inimitable style, Morris untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs, from the ambrotype of three children found clasped in the hands of an unknown soldier at Gettysburg to the indelible portraits of the WPA photography project. Each essay in the book presents the reader with a conundrum and investigates the relationship between photographs and the real world they supposedly record. During the Crimean War, Roger Fenton took two nearly identical photographs of the Valley of the Shadow of Death-one of a road covered with cannonballs, the other of the same road without cannonballs. Susan Sontag later claimed that Fenton posed the first photograph, prompting Morris to return to Crimea to investigate. Can we recover the truth behind Fenton's intentions in a photograph taken 150 years ago? In the midst of the Great Depression and one of the worst droughts on record, FDR's Farm Service Administration sent several photographers, including Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans, to document rural poverty. When Rothstein was discovered to have moved the cow skull in his now-iconic photograph, fiscal conservatives-furious over taxpayer money funding an artistic project-claimed the photographs were liberal propaganda. What is the difference between journalistic evidence, fine art, and staged propaganda? During the Israeli-Lebanese war in 2006, no fewer than four different photojournalists took photographs in Beirut of toys lying in the rubble of bombings, provoking accusations of posing and anti-Israeli bias at the news organizations. Why were there so many similar photographs? And were the accusers objecting to the photos themselves or to the conclusions readers drew from them? With his keen sense of irony, skepticism, and humor, Morris reveals in these and many other investigations how photographs can obscure as much as they reveal and how what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation, Believing Is Seeing is a highly original exploration of photography and perception from one of America's most provocative observers.

    From back-alley gyms and smoke-filled arenas to star-studded casinos and exotic locales, they have chronicled unforgettable stories about determination and dissipation, great champions and punch-drunk has-beens, colorful entourages and outrageous promoters, and, inevitably along the way, have written incisively about race, class, and spectacle in America. Like baseball, boxing has a vivid culture and language all its own, one that has proven irresistible to career sportswriters and literary essayists alike.This gritty and glittering anthology gathers a century of the very best writing about the fights. Here are Jack London on the immortal Jack Johnson; H. L. Mencken and Irvin S. Cobb on Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier, the first “Fight of the Century” that captivated the world in the 1920s; Richard Wright on Joe Louis’s historic first-round knockout of Max Schmeling; A. J. Liebling’s brilliantly comic portrait of a manager who really identifies with his fighter; Jimmy Cannon on Archie Moore, the greatest fighter of the 1950s; James Baldwin and Gay Talese on Floyd Patterson’s epic tilt with Sonny Liston; George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; Norman Mailer on the Rumble in the Jungle; Mark Kram on the Thrilla in Manila; Pete Hamill on legendary trainer and manager Cus D’Amato; Mark Kriegel on Oscar De la Hoya; and David Remnick and Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson. National Book Award–winning novelist Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) offers a foreword.

    Williamson take us to the working-class heart of America, bringing to life—through shoe leather reporting, memoir, vivid stories, stunning photographs, and thoughtful analysis—the deepening crises of poverty and homelessness. The story begins in 1980, when the authors joined forces to cover the America being ignored by the mainstream media—people living on the margins and losing their jobs as a result of deindustrialization. Since then, Maharidge and Williamson have traveled more than half a million miles to investigate the state of the working class (winning a Pulitzer Prize in the process). In Someplace Like America, they follow the lives of several families over the thirty-year span to present an intimate and devastating portrait of workers going jobless. This brilliant and essential study—begun in the trickle-down Reagan years and culminating with the recent banking catastrophe—puts a human face on today’s grim economic numbers. It also illuminates the courage and resolve with which the next generation faces the future.

    This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.For Vultures' Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast has spent his career uncovering the connection between the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He's built a team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thriller-a Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and, most interestingly, veiled connections between the financial industry and energy titans. Palast shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and Central Banks act as puppets for Big Oil.With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures' Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can't write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

    Through incisive, morally engaging conversations with some of the leading political figures, writers, activists, poets, and scholars at work today, the Journal captured the essence of the past three pivotal years in American life and politics, including the final act of the Bush Administration and the early years of Obama.Now, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues brings this groundbreaking work to the page. From Michael Pollan, David Simon, and Jane Goodall to John Grisham, Karen Armstrong, and Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues introduces the ideas that matter today—on subjects as diverse as the politics of food, race in the age of Obama, aging in America, the power of poetry, wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the conflict over gay marriage, and the fate of the American newspaper.With extensive new commentary from Bill Moyers—in the tradition of his national bestsellers A World of Ideas and Healing and the Mind—here is an unparalleled guide to the debates, the cultural currents, and above all the fascinating people who have so powerfully shaped the world we live in.

    Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.

    It will feature the best sports writing from the website, delivered in a full-color book featuring original artwork and a host of print-exclusives—including original fiction, new writing from editor-in-chief Bill Simmons, posters and pull-out sections, old-school baseball cards and mini-booklets, and a cover that looks and feels like you're holding a basketball. Like its namesake website, Grantland Quarterly will regularly include some of the most exciting and form-pushing sports writers currently plying the trade, including Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Bissell, Harris Wittels, John Brandon, Anna Clark, Chris Jones, Colson Whitehead, and many more.

    Writer and “This American Life” radio producer Scott Carrier decided to go there too. He wanted to see for himself: who are these fanatics, the fundamentalists, the Taliban and the like? What do they want?’In his new book, Prisoner of Zion, Carrier writes about his adventures, but also about the bigger problem. Having grown up among Mormons in Salt Lake City, he argues it will never work to attack the true believers head-on. The faithful thrive on persecution. Somehow, he thinks, we need to find a way—inside ourselves—to rise above fear and anger.Prisoner of Zion is Scott Carrier’s second collection of dramatic tales and essays.

    From the earliest colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country s media system, just as the media has contributed to and every so often, combated racial oppression. News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press, and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies.The writing is fast-paced, story-driven, and replete with memorable portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, heroes and villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate and government leaders who built our segregated media system such as Herbert Hoover, whose Federal Radio Commission eagerly awarded a license to a notorious Ku Klux Klan organization in the nation s capital and those who rebelled against that system, like Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a remarkable national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos n Andy off the air.Based on years of original archival research and up-to-the-minute reporting and written by two veteran journalists and leading advocates for a more inclusive and democratic media system, News for All the People should become the standard history of American media.

    To mark the 50th anniversary of the magazine in 2011, Adam Macqueen has produced a fascinating A-Z history of Private Eye.

    His wife, Yvonne, is suspicious of the new church member with the Beyoncesque physique. Find out how this tempestuous love triangle began... This is a short story

    He continued to write the column for almost 20 years, using it as a workshop in which to develop ideas for his later books. Yet over the course of this time, the prolific writer allowed many uncollected gems to fade into obscurity. More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns gathers many of these fugitive pieces, unseen in decades, into a single volume. Filled with his usual obsessions—sex, booze, gambling—More Notes features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly veiled autobiography to fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters, climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers, "My Friend, The Gambler," based on his experiences making the movie Barfly. From his days at the post office through his later fame, More Notes follows the entire arc of Bukowski's career, making it a valuable addition to his oeuvre.

    In this stirring collection, NPR tells stories large and small: of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and the March on Washington; of Pullman porters, an invaluable green book, and women who baked pies to support the Montgomery bus boycott. Personal recollections and historical accounts paint vivid pictures of individuals and events that transformed a nation.

    Durbin traces the migratory patterns of the flightiest members of our televised demimonde, from the vacant bedrooms of the Playboy Mansion to the modern gothic of Kim Kardashian's fairytale wedding, rendering a fabulous, fallen world in a language of diamond-studded lavishness."Durbin elevates petty O.C. arguments between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag to the status of serious literature." -Nylon Magazine"Durbin calls attention to the female character tropes and formulaic narratives that so frequently make up reality TV shows: cattiness, competition amongst women, archetypes for female friendships, etcetera. But far from the snark of most tabloids and celebrity gossip blogs, Durbin considers these women with respect, taking them seriously." -Bitch Magazine"Kate Durbin is pop culture’s stenographer. E! Entertainment ingeniously peers inside the television static, revealing the many fictions that make up our reality, and the many realities which make up our fictions. It’s also a lot of fun to read. I love it.”-Heidi Montag, star of MTV’s The Hills“Since it’s clear that ours is a Golden Age of TV it makes perfect sense that it might be a perfect moment for some Golden Age-type writing on reality television. Boom! That’s what you get in Durbin’s yummy delve into housewives, sexy sirens, lonesome doomed doves, and other boys and girls behaving badly but always with a sense of power.”-Jerry Saltz, senior art critic, New York Magazine

    Now she is sharing the story of her extraordinary life in her poignantly honest memoir, Never in My Wildest Dreams. A reporter for almost five decades, Davis is no stranger to adversity. Born to a fifteen-year-old Louisiana laundress during the Great Depression, and raised in the overcrowded projects of Oakland, California, Davis suffered abuse, battled rejection, and persevered to achieve a career beyond her imagination. Davis has seen the world change in ways she never could have envisioned, from being verbally and physically attacked while reporting on the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco to witnessing the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008.Davis worked her way up to reporting on many of the most explosive stories of recent times, including the Vietnam War protests, the rise and fall of the Black Panthers, the Peoples Temple cult mass suicides at Jonestown, the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the onset of the AIDS epidemic, and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that first put Osama bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted List. She encountered a cavalcade of cultural icons: Malcolm X, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Ronald Reagan, Huey Newton, Muhammad Ali, Alex Haley, Fidel Castro, Dianne Feinstein, Condoleezza Rice, and others.Throughout her career Davis soldiered in the trenches in the battle for racial equality and brought stories of black Americans out of the shadows and into the light of day. Still active in her seventies, Davis, the "Walter Cronkite of the Bay Area," now hosts a weekly news roundtable and special reports at KQED, one of the nation's leading PBS stations, . In this way she has remained relevant and engaged in the stories of today, while offering her anecdote-rich perspective on the decades that have shaped us.

    The New York Times Magazine: Photographs reflects upon and interrogates the very nature of both photography and print magazines at this pivotal moment in their history and evolution. Edited by Kathy Ryan, longtime photo editor of the Magazine, and with a preface by former editorial director Gerald Marzorati, this volume presents some of the finest commissioned photographs worldwide in four sections: reportage, portraiture, style and conceptual photography, including photo illustration. Diverse in content and sensibility, and consistent in virtuosity, the photographs are accompanied by reproduced tear sheets to allow for the examination of sequencing and the interplay between text and image, simultaneously presenting the work while illuminating its distillation to magazine form. This process is explored further through texts offering behind-the-scenes perspective and anecdotes by the many photographers, writers, editors and other collaborators whose voices have been a part of the magazine over the years. Issues of documentary photography are addressed in relation to more conceptual photography; the efficacy of storytelling; and what makes an image evidentiary, objective, subjective, truthful or a tool for advocacy; as well as thoughts on whether these matters are currently moot, or more critical than ever. As such, The New York Times Magazine: Photographs serves as a springboard for a rigorous, necessary and revitalized examination of photography as presented within a modern journalistic context.

    Time and time again, Piazza identifies the unlikely, precious connections between recent events, art, letters, and music; through his words, these byways of popular culture provide an unexpected measure of the times.” —Elvis Costello

    Each issue addresses some of the most passionate political and cultural controversies of the day, and reviews the most engrossing new books and the ideas that illuminate them.

    1953) has a reputation for equal parts brilliance and eccentricity. Living hermit-like in the same Midlands town for his entire life, he supposedly refuses contact with the outside world while creating his strange, dense comics, fiction, and performance art. While Moore did declare himself a wizard on his fortieth birthday and claims to have communed with extradimensional beings, reticence and seclusion have never been among his eccentricities. On the contrary, for long stretches of his career Moore seemed to be willing to chat with all comers: fanzines, industry magazines, other artists, newspapers, magazines, and personal websites. Well over one hundred interviews in the past thirty years serve as testimony to Moore's willingness to be engaged in productive conversation. Alan Moore: Conversations includes ten substantial interviews, beginning with Moore's first published conversation, conducted by V for Vendetta cocreator David Lloyd in 1981. The remainder cover nearly all of his major works, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, Marvelman, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, From Hell, Lost Girls, and the unfinished Big Numbers. While Moore's personal life and fraught business relations are discussed occasionally, the interviews chosen are principally devoted to Moore's creative practices and techniques, along with his shifting social, political, and philosophical beliefs. As such, Alan Moore: Conversations should add to any reader's enjoyment and understanding of Moore's work.

    This year's selections include stories that not only covered the news but also made news, including Michael Hastings's "The Runaway General," which forced the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, days after being published in "Rolling Stone." Readers will also find Jane Mayer's "Covert Operations" ( "The New Yorker"), which exposed the Koch brothers' campaign against the Barack Obama presidency, turning the duo into a powerful symbol of modern, corporatized politics.The anthology contains Scott Horton's investigation into inmate suicides at Guant?namo Bay prison ( "Harper's Magazine"); Christopher Hitchens's wryly moving take on the politics of cancer ( "Vanity Fair"); Jonathan Van Meter's eye-opening portrait of Joan Rivers and her transgressive comedic genius ( "New York Magazine"); and Jonah Weiner's extraordinary musical biography of Kanye West, assembled from the artist's tweets and blog posts ( "Slate"). John Donvan and Caren Zucker describe the world's first autism case in "The Atlantic"; Atul Gawande shares the modern medical profession's poignant struggle with death and dying in "The New Yorker"; and Paul Theroux spins a thrilling tale in the "Virginia Quarterly Review" of a mad collector who acquires works of art only to destroy them. Read together or one at a time, these pieces exemplify the wholly immersive experience of well-crafted magazine writing.

    Some of the essays previously appeared in a collection published only in South Africa, Resident Alien, but others are collected here for the first time. The collection comprises twenty-three pieces; the title story investigates the provenance of the world famous song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda who recorded a song called “Mbube” in the 1930s, which went on to be covered by Pete Seeger, REM, and Phish, and was incorporated into the musical “The Lion King.” In other stories, Malan follows the trial of Winnie Mandela and plunges into the explosive controversy over President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s.The stories, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa.

    Michael J. Totten's version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the world's most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.He sets up camp in a tent city built in downtown Beirut by anti-Syrian dissidents, is bullied and menaced by Hezbollah's supposedly friendly "media relations" department, crouches under fire on the Lebanese-Israeli border during the six-week war in 2006, witnesses an Israeli ground invasion from behind a line of Merkava tanks, sneaks into Hezbollah's post-war rubblescape without authorization, and is attacked in Beirut by militiamen who enforce obedience to the "resistance" at the point of a gun.From the "Cedar Revolution" that ousted the occupying Syrian military regime in 2005, to the devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, and to Hezbollah's slow-motion but violent assault on Lebanon's elected government and capital, Totten's account is both personal and comprehensive. He simplifies the bewildering complexity of the Middle East, has access to major regional players as well as to the man on the street, and personally witnesses most of the events he describes. The Road to Fatima Gate should be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the Middle East, Iran's expansionist foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism in the aftermath of September 11.

    Photojournalism presents the extraordinary history of this indispensable means of reporting. Starting with some of the first key figures, such as Roger Fenton, who photographed the Crimean War with a bulky large-format camera, it moves through the decades, from the Great Depression to space missions, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, and the war in Iraq--all illustrated with stirring images from the world's greatest photojournalists.

    Credited as the proverbial father of muckraking reporting, Steffens quickly rose to the top of McClure’s team of investigative journalists, earning him the attention of many powerful politicians who utilized his knack for tireless probing to battle government corruption and greedy politicians. A mentor of Walter Lippmann, friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and advisor of Woodrow Wilson, Steffens is best known for bringing to light the Mexican Revolution, the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times, and the Versailles peace talks.Now, with print journalism and investigative reporters on the decline, Lincoln Steffens’ biography serves as a necessary call to arms for the newspaper industry. Hartshorn’s extensive research captures each detail of Steffens’ life—from his private letters to friends to his long and colorful career—and delves into the ongoing internal struggle between his personal life and his overpowering devotion to the “cause.”

    Marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, The Atlantic’s special commemorative edition, featuring an introduction by President Barack Obama, showcases some of the most iconic stories from the magazine’s archives—with contributions from some of America’s most important writers, including Mark Twain, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott.Through reporting, essays, fiction, and poetry, The Atlantic chronicled the war firsthand—from the country’s deepening divisions in the years leading up to the conflict, to the horrors of the battlefield, to the reshaping of society after the war’s conclusion.

    

    At its most public, it unites people across cultural boundaries. But can it rebuild a city? That's the central question posed in New Atlantis, journalist John Swenson's beautifully detailed account of the musical artists working to save America's most colorful and troubled metropolis: New Orleans. The city has been threatened with extinction many times during its three-hundred-plus-year history by fire, pestilence, crime, flood, and oil spills. Working for little money and in spite of having lost their own homes and possessions to Katrina, New Orleans's most gifted musicians--including such figures as Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, Trombone Shorty, and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux--are fighting back against a tidal wave of problems: the depletion of the wetlands south of the city (which are disappearing at the rate of one acre every hour), the violence that has made New Orleans the murder capitol of the U.S., the waning tourism industry, and above all the continuing calamity in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (or, as it is known in New Orleans, the Federal Flood). Indeed, most of the neighborhoods that nurtured the indigenous music of New Orleans were destroyed in the flood, and many of the elder statesmen have died or been incapacitated since then, but the musicians profiled here have stepped up to fill their roles. New Atlantis is their story. Packed with indelible portraits of individual artists, informed by Swenson's encyclopedic knowledge of the city's unique and varied music scene--which includes jazz, R&B, brass band, rock, and hip hop--New Atlantis is a stirring chronicle of the valiant efforts to preserve the culture that gives New Orleans its grace and magic.

    It is a journey encompassing a Dutch-owned model farm in Ethiopia; a conference in Riyadh, where representatives of Third World governments compete to attract Saudi investors; meetings in Rome where the fate of nations is decided; and the headquarters of the Movement of Landless Workers in São Paulo.Since the food crisis of 2007–8, when the cost of staples such as rice and corn went through the roof, the race to acquire land in the southern hemisphere has become more intense than ever. Land Grabbing is the shocking story of how one half of the world is starved to feed the other.

    Widowed former teacher, social worker and my mom, she found her days ignited after she reached sixty. Even while her vision decreased, her joie de vivre remained. It made countless people say, "You're my hero. I want to be just like you." They all insisted I write a book about her, which might help anyone getting older. It's never too late, we all learned. May her story inspire you or someone you love. .

    While not sure initially if she wanted to be the Star's "woman columnist," Michele tried to use her column as a voice for those who had none. The hundreds of letters that poured in - both those in support of what she was writing and those outraged by it - let her know that what she was doing not only mattered, it was badly needed. For twenty-five years, Michele Landsberg chronicled the lives of women, their struggles and their achievements. She became an activist in support of women's rights, childcare programs, education reform, rape crisis centres, women's work and health, and many more hotly debated issues. Her columns were a force for social and legal change - women turned to her because they knew that they could count on her to tell the real story. In Writing the Revolution, Michele takes the best of those 3000 columns and uses them to reflect on the past, present, and future of women's lives in Canada. While recognizing the success of the women's movement, she knows the fight is not over. A feminist hero and an unflinching activist, Michele is an inspiration to the women who read her column, and to a passionate new generation of women who are fighting to see that the revolution continues.

    Stemming from frustration with the lack of any mainstream media criticism of the Vietnam War, the creation of the papers was emboldened by the victories of the Civil Rights–era, anticolonial movements in the Third World and the use of LSD. In the four short years from 1965–1969, the subversive press grew from five small newspapers in five cities in the United States to more than 500 newspapers—with millions of readers—all over the world. Stories by the people involved with the production and distribution of the papers, such as Bill Ayers, Paul Buhle, Paul Krassner, and Trina Robbins, bring the history of the movement to life. Full-color scans taken from a broad range of publications, from the Berkeley Barb and the Los Angeles Free Press to Chicago Seed and Screw: The Sex Review, are also included, showing the incredible energy that fueled the counterculture of the 1960s.

    Wood spent nine months in their world.The result is our third e-book, "Beyond the Battlefield," an intimate portrait of the soldiers and Marines who volunteered for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happened to them after bomb blasts and bullets changed them forever. First published as a 10-part series, this e-book is an expanded version, including a foreword and several new chapters, as well as some of the most poignant photography and revelatory graphics from the original series.Wood, who has covered wars in Africa, Central America and the Middle East, has made nine reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he has accompanied soldiers and Marines on numerous combat operations. A former correspondent for Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Newhouse News Service and the Baltimore Sun, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting.As Wood's work revealed, one of the enduring legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the young Americans who have come home severely, catastrophically wounded. They come home not to parades and honor guards and flags, but with terribly burned faces, amputated limbs, traumatic brain injury and other psychological wounds. And once home, veterans and their loved ones are often left alone to deal with years of recovery and the lingering effects of those injuries. And yet that is the good news, Wood said. A decade ago most of them would have died on the battlefield. They are now being saved, thanks to fast-paced improvements in military trauma medicine. Yet the long-term quality of life for them is uncertain, and the costs of lifetime care can be staggering. There are more than 16,000 of them, and while many Americans are eager to know them and to offer help where it's needed, they are largely without voice, invisible and unknown to most of us."Beyond the Battlefield" changes that.

    It is a relationship filled with joy and heartbreak, love and anger, lessons learned, and opportunities missed.The stories in this collection are engaging and meaningful. Some are reverential and loving; some are sad and clouded by yearning, loss, and regret: You'll read reflections from expectant and new dads, full of optimism, as well as from longtime parents who, through the distance of time, are able to reflect on their successes and failures as fathers.We also hear from children (some young and some well into adulthood) writing about their fathers. They honestly and openly introduce us to the men who shaped them, sometimes in surprising ways. They talk about the fathers they want to emulate, the mistakes they hope to avoid repeating, and the wisdom they realized they've gained.This I Believe: On Fatherhood offers a compelling portrait of the diverse range of experiences and beliefs related to the father-child relationship. With personal insights and inspiration, this collection makes a wonderful gift for long-time fathers, new fathers, and fathers-to-be.

    The account illustrates how the author attempted to convince the government to investigate allegations surrounding a multinational corporation, suspecting that they were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of South Africans who were mining vanadium--a vital strategic mineral. Documenting Coleman-Adebayo's shocking discovery that the EPA itself was the first line of defense for the corporation in question, this record depicts how the agency stonewalled, prompting the author to expose them. The agency's brutal retaliation is captured in detail, revealing their use of every racist and sexist trick in their playbook, costing the protagonist her career, endangering her family, and sacrificing more lives in the vanadium mines of South Africa.Finishing on a hopeful note, the recollection concludes with the upwelling of support the author received from others in the federal bureaucracy, detailing how her subsequent grassroots struggle to protect future whistleblowers ended in victory.

    Bush in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Only a few months later, Operation Anaconda sent American-led coalition forces into their most intensely brutal confrontation with Al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts in the Shar-i Kot Valley near the Pakistan border. The result was an unexpected set piece of conventional fighting in what has become an era of guerrilla warfare. Drawing upon previously unavailable or neglected sources, Lester Grau and Dodge Billingsley give us the most complete and accurate account of this thirteen-day firefight waged in mountainous terrain nearly two miles above sea level. As an added bonus, the authors also include with the book a documentary on DVD that features interviews with soldiers who fought in Anaconda, provides additional information concerning major phases of the battle, and presents insightful commentary by Grau and by Billingsley, who was on the ground with U.S. forces for the operation.

    This booklet is based on her observations there. Miss Strong has achieved international eminence as a correspondent for her reports from the major capitals of the world and her coverage of some of the most historic events of our times. Among her many books are The Soviets Expected It, Peoples of the USSR, and I Saw the New Poland. Her latest, just published, is Tomorrow's China.

    government in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. "Cointelpro" refers to the official FBI COunter INTELligence PROgram carried out to surveil, imprison, and eliminate leaders of social justice movements and to disrupt, divide, and destroy the movements as well. Many of the government's crimes are still unknown. Through interviews with activists who experienced these abuses first-hand and with rare historical footage, the film provides an educational introduction to a period of intense repression and draws relevant lessons for present and future movements. Interviews in the video include: Muhammad Ahmad, Bob Boyle, Kathleen Cleaver, Ward Churchill, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Priscilla Falcon, Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, Jose Lopez, Francisco 'Kiko' Martinez, Lucy Rodriguez, Ricardo Romero, Akinyele Umoja, and Laura Whitehorn.

    Martin A. Berger’s provocative and groundbreaking study shows how the very pictures credited with arousing white sympathy, and thereby paving the way for civil rights legislation, actually limited the scope of racial reform in the 1960s. Berger analyzes many of these famous images—dogs and fire hoses turned against peaceful black marchers in Birmingham, tear gas and clubs wielded against voting-rights marchers in Selma—and argues that because white sympathy was dependent on photographs of powerless blacks, these unforgettable pictures undermined efforts to enact—or even imagine—reforms that threatened to upend the racial balance of power.

    

    This revealing collection of interviews tells the story of his 30-year career in his own words. Including his debauched years with the Birthday Party, the global success of the Bad Seeds and their ragged gospel-rock, Cave's addictions and artistry, and the roots of the barbed gothic romanticism that suffuses his lyrics. Displaying provocative intelligence and enigmatic vision, Cave offers valuable insight into the risks and gains of surrendering oneself to the rock’n’roll myth.

    If you aim for the heart with the copy you write and the sound and video you capture, you will never fail to grab your viewers and compel them to keep watching. With humor, honesty and directness, Tompkins bottles his years of experience and insight in a new second edition that offers students the fundamentals they need to master, with the practical know-how they can immediately put to use.

    What she learned instead were brutal truths about women’s rights, the politics of corruption, the failures of democracy, the mechanism of globalization, and a profound emotional connection that can only be called love. Moore’s fascinating story from the cusp of the global economic meltdown is a look at her time with the first all-women’s dormitory in the history of the country, just kilometers away from the notorious Killing Fields. Her tale is a noble one, as heartbreaking as it is hilarious; staunchly ethical yet conflicted and human.Moore’s in-depth examination of her stint among the first large group of social-justice-minded young women from the impoverished provinces is told in intimate, mood-evocative, beautifully-written first-person prose. Cambodian Grrrl is the first in a series of short essay collections on contemporary media, art, and educational work by, for, and with young women in Southeast Asia. Part memoir and part investigative report, Moore’s story could only be told by her. The result is illuminating, vital reading.

    The Jim Murray Reader gathers some of Murray’s best columns from the height of his career and showcases the wit and the style that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1990. His inexhaustible talent and limitless range are on full display here: from the perplexities of tennis scoring (“a game in which love counts for nothing, deuces are wild, and the scoring system was invented by Lewis Carroll”) and baseball rules (“The infield fly rule is about as simple as calligraphy. It might as well be a Japanese naval code”) to Murray’s Laws (“The way to make a line move faster is to join the other one”) and many of his colorful profiles (“Richard Petty has climbed in more windows than 50 car thieves. . . . He wasn’t born, he was assembled and modified”). His striking images, evocative prose, and hyperbolic one-liners have made Murray one of the most quotable and most celebrated sports columnists of the twentieth century.

    leads out of the pointless convenience of demonization and the easy boxes of political expediency and shows how out leaders invested not only money or time or effort but their very humanity in our people's favorite form of both government and entertainment... it helps us realize that at least one way to win in the political game, is to step out of it and so, to learn." Quote from the publisher's note

    While these three classic newspaper strips have been reprinted, until now, the immense talent behind them has never been afforded a large-scale art monograph dedicated to his entire career. Produced with full access to Caniff''s extensive personal archives at The Ohio State University, and with the cooperation of the Caniff estate, this oversized book reproduces from the original artwork hundreds of comics, illustrations, pencil sketches, and drawings - including many not previously reprinted. In addition to the three famous comic strips, represented are his childhood drawings, the beginnings of his career as a newspaper cartoonist, his significant contributions to the 1940s war effort, as well as his continuing relationship with the Air Force, Boy Scouts, and other organizations.

    Until their troubled son showed up with a need for cash--and a thirst for murder. . . Two Bodies David Legg was an obsessive control freak and an army deserter. After fathering an illegitimate child, he wooed and wed a trusting young woman--only to destroy his marriage with lies and infidelities. But his deceptions were far from over. . . A Savage Son In June of 1996, Jeannie and Brian were found shot to death, their bodies sitting next to each other on their living room loveseat. Jeannie's expensive ring and the couple's credit cards were missing. Meanwhile, David, the prime suspect, was living it up in Hawaii with his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, draining his dead parents' savings through ATMs. After a long and costly chase this remorseless killer faced a jury of his peers in 2000, and was locked behind bars for life. "True crime afficionados will savor this riveting read." --Publishers Weekly on Honeymoon with a Killer

    A newly updated account of the struggle for disability rights in the U.S.

    Fowler was a dominant force in Canadian foreign affairs. In one heart-stopping minute, all of that changed. On December 14, 2008, Fowler, acting as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Niger, was kidnapped by Al Qaeda, becoming the highest ranked UN official ever held captive. Along with his colleague Louis Guay, Fowler lived, slept and ate with his captors for nearly five months, gaining rare first-hand insight into the motivations of the world’s most feared terror group. Fowler’s capture, release and subsequent media appearances have helped shed new light on foreign policy and security issues as we enter the second decade of the “War on Terror.”A Season in Hell is Fowler’s compelling story of his captivity, told in his own words, but it is also a startlingly frank discussion about the state of a world redefined by clashing civilizations.

    The book brings together senior journalists and ordinary viewers to examine how audiences understand the news and how their views are shaped by media reporting. In the largest study ever undertaken in this area, the authors focus on television news. They illustrate major differences in the way Israelis and Palestinians are represented, including how casualties are shown and the presentation of the motives and rationales of both sides. They combine this with extensive audience research involving hundreds of participants from the USA, Britain and Germany. It shows extraordinary differences in levels of knowledge and understanding, especially amongst young people from these countries.Covering recent developments, including the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, this authoritative and up-to-date study will be an invaluable tool for journalists, activists and students and researchers of media studies.

    Award-winning foreign correspondent Michael J. Totten visited Iraq seven times between 2005 and 2009, first as a "unilateral" freelance journalist without a gun in the Kurdish autonomous region, and then as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Baghdad, Sadr City, Ramadi, and Fallujah. He was there at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of General David Petraeus' "surge" of combat troops to Iraq and saw first-hand how young men from places like Florida and Texas pacified a relentless insurgency-an insurgency that most people, during the darkest days of the war, assumed would be victorious.In the Wake of the Surge is a bracing story of war in a tormented country by a writer who has spent enough time in the Middle East to know there are few happy endings, but who nevertheless was a witness when Iraqis and Americans drove each other to the brink of the abyss before managing, against all odds and at the very last second, to pull back and save themselves from utter catastrophe.Praise for Michael J. Totten"I think of only a certain number of people as having risen to the intellectual and journalistic challenges of the last few years, and Michael J. Totten is one of them." - Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism"Michael J. Totten...practices journalism in the tradition of Orwell: morally imaginative, partisan in the best sense of the word, and delivered in crackling, rapid-fire prose befitting the violent realities it depicts. An unabashed classical liberal, Totten brings his political commitments and emotional intelligence to bear on the dramatic events he witnesses. As a result, he ends up far more clearsighted than the many analysts who claim 'objectivity' but share neither his love of the region and its inhabitants nor his concern for its future." - Sohrab Ahmari, Commentary"Michael J. Totten is a one of a rare breed. Moving from front to front, he brings experience and context and the willingness to go where few men dare." - Michael Yon, author of Moment of Truth in Iraq"Michael J. Totten, to my mind, is one of the world's most acute observers of Middle East politics. He is also an absolutely fearless reporter, both physically-he has explored the darkest corners of Middle East extremism-and morally." - Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and TerrorPraise for The Road to Fatima Gate"A terrific book about a terrifying and beautiful part of the world." - Benjamin Kerstein, Jewish Ideas Daily columnist"It is extremely rare to read such an accurate account of anything to which one was oneself a witness." - Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great"A thriller in which a daredevil reporter puts himself in harm's way in search of the inside story of some of the most dangerous outfits in the world." - Amir Taheri, Asharq al-Awsat"Outstanding...it grabbed me so quickly that I ended up lost in it." - Claire Berlinski, Ricochet

    Stop the clocks! Shout it from the rooftops! Australia are in utter disarray!The Ashes 2010-11 saw the coming together of the old foes in Australia's backyard. Back in freezing, snowy England, untold numbers huddled around their TV sets to watch the struggle into the early hours of the morning. But for many the joy was only complete with the accompaniment of guardian.co.uk's Over By Over.Around the globe they joined in from unlikely locations, offering stories of emotional drinking, marital predicament and witty observations as the series built to an astonishing climax. Could England really be about to crush Australia - in a manner not witnessed for a generation?There were Cook's runs - all 766 of them, Anderson's wickets, Prior's catching and the power of Pietersen. We saw established stars like Graeme Swann and Andrew Strauss, unpredicted stars like Tim Bresnan, spasmodic stars like Mitchell Johnson and fading stars like Paul Collingwood and Ricky Ponting.Now 766 and All That allows us to savour again the sweet taste of that absolute victory - exactly as it happened, Over by Over.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    So, if you've reached a stage in your career or education where your writing needs to be high quality, Grammar for Grown Ups is a must for your top drawer. Vocational rather than academic, Grammar for Grown Ups is packed with real-life examples and keeps you engaged with a wealth of great quotations from Homer the Greek to Homer the Simpson.Straight talking and methodical, Craig Shrives draws on his years as an intelligence officer as well as over a decade spent compiling his popular grammar website to present a comprehensive but light-hearted and easily digestible grammar reference guide. Find out whether winter should have a capital W, the difference between a hyphen and a dash, where to place your commas and crucial cross-Atlantic differences. Grammar for Grown Ups is perfect for anyone who wants to brush up on half-remembered rules and write with confidence. Originally published under the title Grammar Rules

    This became obvious to El Paso City Representatives Susie Byrd and Beto O’Rourke when they started to ask questions about why El Paso’s sister city, Ciudad Juárez, has become the deadliest city in the world—8,000-plus deaths since January 1, 2008. Byrd and O’Rourke soon realized American drug use and United States' failed War on Drugs are at the core of problem. In Dealing Death and Drugs — a book written for the general reader — they explore the costs and consequences of marijuana prohibition. They argue that marijuana prohibition has created a black market so profitable that drug kingpins are billionaires and drug control doesn’t stand a chance. Using Juárez as their focus, they describe the business model of drug trafficking and explain why this illicit system has led to the never-ending slaughter of human beings. Their position: the only rational alternative to the War on Drugs is to end to the current prohibition on marijuana."If Washington won’t do anything different, if Mexico City won’t do anything different, then it is up to us — the citizens of the border who understand the futility and tragedy of this current policy first hand — to lead the way." — from the AfterwordA portion of the proceeds from the sale of Dealing Death and Drugs will be donated to Centro Santa Catalina, a faith-based community in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, founded in 1996 by Dominican Sisters for the spiritual, educational and economic empowerment of economically poor women and for the welfare of their families.

    The majority of investigative manuals devote a lot of space to the subject of where to find information. They assume that once a reporter finds the information he or she seeks, he or she will be able to compose a viable story.The publication focuses on the hypothesis-based inquiry approach, which takes the basic assumption that a story is only a hypothesis until verified. The methods and skills applying to every step of the investigative process, from conception to research, writing, quality control and dissemination, have been thoroughly analyzed and are well illustrated by case studies in each chapter.UNESCO has consistently supported initiatives that promote accountability and professional standards in journalism. Since 2005 the Amman-based ARIJ has been working to improve the quality of investigative reporting and nurture a culture of investigative journalism across the region, among and by Arab media professionals and activists, for the benefit of the Arab public.

    Created by Dale Messick, the first woman to create, draw, and write a syndicated newspaper strip, Brenda Starr successfully mixed romance, fashion, and adventure into one of the longest running features in newspaper history. Even though the strip will officially end its syndicated run on January 2, 2011, the feature will continue through Hermes Press' reprints of the strip's early years. The first volume of this series will reprint, for the first time, the first two Sunday storylines in full color. Hermes Press is digitally restoring these Sundays so that they look better than when they were first released. Also featured in this volume will be the first "Man of Mystery" story featuring Brenda's love interest, Basil St. John. Brenda Starr, Reporter started as a Sunday-only strip, but by October 22, 1945 a daily version of the feature also appeared. The first daily sequence will also be featured in the first volume of Hermes Press' reprint.

    During a five-year detour at Mercury Records in the early 1970s, Nelson signed the New York Dolls to their first recording contract, then settled back down to writing criticism at ROLLING STONE as the last in a great tradition of record-review editors that included Jon Landau, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus. Famously championing the early careers of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Rod Stewart, Neil Young, and Warren Zevon, Nelson not only wrote about them but often befriended them. Never one to be pigeonholed, he was also one of punk rock’s first stateside mainstream proponents, embracing the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. But in 1982, he walked away from it all — ROLLING STONE, his friends, and rock & roll. By the time he died in his New York City apartment in 2006 at the age of seventy — a week passing before anybody discovered his body — almost everything he’d written had been relegated to back issues of old music magazines. How could a man whose writing had been so highly regarded have fallen so quickly from our collective memory? With Paul Nelson’s posthumous blessing, Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing EVERYTHING IS AN AFTERTHOUGHT: THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PAUL NELSONN. This unique anthology-biography compiles Nelson’s best works (some of it previously unpublished) while also providing a vivid account of his private and public lives. Avery interviewed almost 100 of Paul Nelson’s friends, family, and colleagues, including several of the artists about whom he’d written. Bruce Springsteen says, “He is somebody who played a very essential part in that creative moment when I was there trying to establish what I was doing and what I wanted our band to be about.” This is a landmark work of cultural revival, a tribute to and collection by one of the unsung critical champions of popular art. Black-and-white illustrations and photographs throughout.[Please note: There are listings online for a Feral House edition of this title, which was never published. The Fantagraphics edition is not only the preferred edition, it's the only edition.]

    A well-known TV presenter speaks to people who have found themselves in difficult situations--illness, death of relatives etc.--trying to make us aware of how valuable and fragile life is.

    It is a sequel to Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer (1955), which was concerned with images of the Second World War, whereas War Primer 2 updates Brecht’s piece with images of conflict generated by both sides of the so-called “War on Terror”.War Primer 2 was produced in the artists’ studio in a limited edition of 100 copies, applying silkscreen and offset printed images to 100 copies of a 1998 edition (Libris, London) of Bertolt Brecht’s 1955 War Primer. This digital version combines critical and academic essays about War Primer with a screen based rendition of the artist’s book.

    It shows how the three generations coped with the conflict while they made a living, reared their families, took care of the elderly, fell in love, lost loved ones, struggled to hold a marriage together, and choose right and wrong ways to profit from the war. Like all generations, they carried the burdens of the past into their own times in order to prepare for the future.

    He has created some of contemporary dance's finest productions, often using leftfield rock music (most famously in his fantastic collaboration with The Fall, I Am Curious, Orange). Situated at the heart of the British postpunk art scene, Clark is much admired for his judicious choice of collaborators, such as designers Bodymap, artists Cerith Wyn Evans, Leigh Bowery, Charles Atlas, Peter Doig and Sarah Lucas, film director Peter Greenaway (Clark played Caliban in Prospero's Books) and bands The Fall, Laibach and Wire. This monograph, the first on this major artist, celebrates the whole of Michael Clark's career to date, from the late 70s to the present. Rich in visual and archival material, it contains new essays on Clark's work, photography by Hugo Glendinning, Richard Haughton, Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, Chris Nash and others, plus interviews with many of Clark's collaborators from the worlds of dance, art, fashion and music. Limited edition photographs are available from the publisher.Michael Clark set up his own dance company in 1984, at the age of 22. He immediately won the admiration of Rudolf Nureyev, who commissioned ballets from Clark for the repertoire at the Paris Opera. Clark has also been the subject of numerous films and documentaries, including the fictional biography Hail the New Puritan by Charles Atlas and The Late Michael Clark, directed by Sophie Fiennes.

    Some, like Glenn McGrath, insisted that history would repeat itself and Australia would administer another 5-0 whitewash. What no one anticipated was that the 2010-11 Ashes Tests would see one of the most complete performances ever by an England touring side, the first Ashes victory on Australian soil for 24 years, with, uniquely, three innings victories. It was a series, indeed a tour, full of remarkable records, from the bats of Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott, and the ball of James Anderson and Graham Swann.  Every member of the side made crucial contributions—even those like Chris Tremlett and Tim Bresnan who had not originally been first choices for the Tests. Now, Gideon Haigh, "one of the best living writers on cricket" (Daily Telegraph), tells the full story of this amazing sporting achievement. Beginning with the build-up to the series—Australia going into it on the back of an uncharacteristic losing run, England after a year of quietly solid consolidation—he covers each Test, day by day, in pithy match reports and elegant analyses. Ashes 2011 is the perfect way to re-live a memorable sporting triumph.

    Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge.

    deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution." Decades of greed and self-interest pushed the NCAA to collapse under the weight of its hypocrisy. The parasitic business of college sports generates billions every year, yet fails to compensate college athletes.

    Voss was a high school junior in Plainville, Kansas in mid-November of 1959 when four members of the Herbert Clutter family were murdered in Holcomb, Kansas, by “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives,” an unimaginable horror in a quiet farm community during the Eisenhower years. No one in Kansas or elsewhere could then have foreseen the emergence of Capote’s book–which has never gone out of print, has twice been made into a major motion picture, remains required reading in criminology, American Studies, sociology, and English classes, and has been the source of two recent biographical films.Voss examines Capote and In Cold Blood from many perspectives, not only as the crowning achievement of Capote’s career, but also as a story in itself, focusing on Capote’s artfully composed text, his extravagant claims for it as reportage, and its larger status in American popular culture.Voss argues that Capote’s publication of In Cold Blood in 1966 forever transcended his reputation as a first-rate stylist but second-rate writer of  “Southern gothic” fiction; that In Cold Blood actually is a gothic novel, a sophisticated culmination of Capote’s artistic development and interest in lurid regionalism, but one that nonetheless eclipsed him both personally and artistically. He also explores Capote’s famous claim that he created a genre called the “non-fiction novel,” and its status as a foundational work of “true crime” writing as practiced by authors ranging from Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer to James Ellroy, Joe McGinniss, and John Berendt.Voss also examines Capote’s artful manipulation of the story’s facts and circumstances: his masking of crucial homoerotic elements to enhance its marketability; his need for the killers to remain alive long enough to get the story, and then his need for them to die so that he could complete it; and Capote’s style, his shaping of the narrative, and his selection of details–why it served him to include this and not that, and the effects of such choices—all despite confident declarations that “every word is true.”Though it’s been nearly 50 years since the Clutter murders and far more gruesome crimes have been documented, In Cold Blood continues to resonate deeply in popular culture. Beyond questions of artistic selection and claims of truth, beyond questions about capital punishment and Capote’s own post-publication dissolution, In Cold Blood’s ongoing relevance stems, argues Voss, from its unmatched role as a touchstone for enduring issues of truth, exploitation, victimization, and the power of narrative.

    With new introductions by the artist himself and plenty of added ephemera, this is the volume that Collier completists have been waiting for. Introduction by Jeet Heer: "In the single panel strips, notably the Saskatoon Sketches and the 24 Simcoe Street strip Collier did for the National Post, the drawings are deployed in the service of anecdotes. Each individual strip might seem slight but as you read them they add up to a quirky autobiography. It's a mistake to read these single panels in the spirit of The Family Circus or Marmaduke, expecting a big laugh. Rather you have to look at each one as a snapshot of a day's event, a diary entry in cartoon form."

    Though rightly regarded for its fantastically rich blues heritage, Mississippi can also claim the birthplace of rock & roll (Tupelo, Miss., where Elvis Presley was born) and country (Meridian, Miss., where Jimmie Rodgers, "The Father of Country Music," was born).But, of course, even those genres don't cover it all.Want funky housewife disco? We've got it. Soul music from an underrated genius? Check. Seventeen-piece all-babe big band? Check. Lonesome Sun Records–approved hillbilly? Check. This year's OA CD includes those sounds, plus: jazz, gospel, New Wave, garage rock, 1950s pop—and much more.Beyond the tunes, there is the text, and this year's Oxford American Southern Music Issue is no different than its 12 predecessors in attracting some of the world's most scintillating music writers to contribute. To wit:* The nuanced and thorough Peter Guralnick on Sam Phillips's greatest musical discovery (Elvis? Jerry Lee Lewis? Johnny Cash? See our cover for the answer)* The controversial but stylish Elijah Wald on the x-rated origins of blues lyrics* The sublime Cynthia Shearer on her former mentor Barry Hannah's most personal mixtape* The stupendous William Gay on one of his all-time favorite artists, Mississippi John HurtPLUS: A special section of The OA featuring lists and musings by a shapely medley of provocateurs, including Roy Blount, Jr., Nick Hornby, and Rosanne Cash, to name just a few.

    Figuring out how to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 in subsequent years has also been challenging. As our literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, wrote on the two-year anniversary, “It is still difficult to believe what for two years we have known.” The same could be said of the ten-year anniversary. The compilation of pieces reprinted here is not comprehensive, but we have done our best to curate a collection that, at the very least, gathers and preserves. This, after all, was one of the crucial functions of writing in the wake of September 11. “All around us, on the ground or fluttering in the air,” wrote David Grann for TNR in the wake of the attacks, “were thousands of pieces of paper. They had been blown out of the World Trade Center and were still swirling.” The fragments of lives inscribed on the charred sheets that Grann gathered at Ground Zero were and are wrenching, both in their banality and their poeticism: desk calendars; part of a novel; an e-mail that said, simply, “I’ll see you at two. Love S.” The entirety of Grann’s article, along with the work of many other authors, is republished here. We hope that, in some fragmentary way, these essays provide a fitting remembrance.