Best of
Journalism

2014

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes


Anand Gopal - 2014
    missteps: a Taliban commander, a U.S.-backed warlord, and a housewife trapped in the middle of the fighting. With its intimate accounts of life in small Afghan villages, and harrowing tales of crimes committed by Taliban leaders and American-supported provincial officials alike, No Good Men Among the Living lays bare the workings of America’s longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony. A thoroughly original exposé of the conflict that is still being fought, it shows just how the American intervention went so desperately wrong.

Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington


Sharyl Attkisson - 2014
    Whoever is doing it is using highly sophisticated spyware available only to our top intelligence agencies. Is someone trying to send Attkisson a message?Seasoned CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reveals how she has been electronically surveilled while digging deep into the Obama Administration and its scandals, and offers an incisive critique of her industry and the shrinking role of investigative journalism in today’s mediaAmericans are at the mercy of powerful figures in business and government who are virtually unaccountable. The Obama Administration in particular has broken new ground in its monitoring of journalists, intimidation and harassment of opposition groups, and surveillance of private citizens. Sharyl Attkisson has been a journalist for more than thirty years. During that time she has exposed scandals and covered controversies under both Republican and Democratic administrations. She has also seen the opponents of transparency go to ever greater lengths to discourage and obstruct legitimate reporting.Attkisson herself has been subjected to “opposition research” efforts and spin campaigns. These tactics increased their intensity as she relentlessly pursued stories that the Obama Administration deemed dangerous to it. Stonewalled is the story of how her news reports were met with a barrage of PR warfare tactics, including online criticism, spying in her personal computer, probable phone taps, illegal access to her business lines to CBS, as well as emails and phone calls up the network chain of command in an effort to intimidate and discourage the next story. In Stonewalled, Attkisson recounts her personal tale, setting it against the larger story of the decline of investigative journalism and unbiased truth telling in America today.

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap


Matt Taibbi - 2014
    Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world's wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends--growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration--come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime--but it's impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World


Christina Lamb - 2014
    She crossed the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan with mujaheddin fighting the Russians and fell unequivocally in love with this fierce country of pomegranates and war, a relationship which has dominated her adult life.Since 2001, Lamb has watched with incredulity as the West fought a war with its hands tied, committed too little too late, failed to understand local dynamics and turned a blind eye as their Taliban enemy was helped by their ally Pakistan.Farewell Kabul tells how success was turned into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It has been a fiasco which has left Afghanistan still one of the poorest nations on earth, the Taliban undefeated, and nuclear armed Pakistan perhaps the most dangerous place on earth.With unparalleled access to all key decision-makers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, London and Washington, from heads of state and generals as well as soldiers on the ground, Farewell Kabul tells how this happened.In Afghanistan, Lamb has travelled far beyond Helmand – from the caves of Tora Bora in the south to the mountainous bad lands of Kunar in the east; from Herat, city of poets and minarets in the west, to the very poorest province of Samangan in the north. She went to Guantánamo, met Taliban in Quetta, visited jihadi camps in Pakistan and saw bin Laden’s house just after he was killed. Saddest of all, she met women who had been made role models by the West and had then been shot, raped or forced to flee the country.This deeply personal book not only shows the human cost of political failure but explains how short-sighted encouragement of jihadis to fight the Russians, followed by prosecution of ill-thought-out wars, has resulted in the spread of terrorism throughout the Islamic world.

The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka's Civil War


Rohini Mohan - 2014
    In 2009, the Sri Lankan army finally defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers guerrillas in a fierce battle that swept up about 300,000 civilians and killed more than 40,000. More than a million had been displaced by the conflict, and the resilient among them still dared to hope. But the next five years changed everything.Rohini Mohan’s searing account of three lives caught up in the devastation looks beyond the heroism of wartime survival to reveal the creeping violence of the everyday. When city-bred Sarva is dragged off the streets by state forces, his middle-aged mother, Indra, searches for him through the labyrinthine Sri Lankan bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Mugil, a former child soldier, deserts the Tigers in the thick of war to protect her family.Having survived, they struggle to live as the Sri Lankan state continues to attack minority Tamils and Muslims, frittering away the era of peace. Sarva flees the country, losing his way – and almost his life – in a bid for asylum. Mugil stays, breaking out of the refugee camp to rebuild her family and an ordinary life in the village she left as a girl. But in her tumultuous world, desires, plans, and people can be snatched away in a moment.The Seasons of Trouble is a startling, brutal, yet beau­tifully written debut from a prize-winning journal­ist. It is a classic piece of reportage, five years in the making, and a trenchant, compassionate examina­tion of the corrosive effect of conflict on a people.

The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited


Louisa Lim - 2014
    Memory is dangerous in a country built to function on national amnesia. A single act of public remembrance might expose the frailty of the state's carefully constructed edifice of accepted history, one kept aloft by strict censorship, blatant falsehood, and willful forgetting. Though the consequences of Tiananmen Square are visible everywhere throughout China, what happened there has been consigned to silence. In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR's China correspondent Louisa Lim offers an insider's account of this seminal tragedy, revealing the enormous impact it had on China and the reverberations still felt today. Official hypocrisy and the government's obsession with maintaining stability and silence have deepened June 4th's impact on the nation's psyche. Lim interweaves portraits of eight individuals whose lives have been shaped by June 4--including the two women who started Tiananmen Mothers, one of the first and most prominent grassroots organizations outside the Chinese government's control; a student survivor involved in the protests; a soldier who took part in the suppression; and a high-ranking government administrator who played a role in ordering the tanks into the square. In the process she offers a textured, intimate, and haunting look at the national tragedy and an unhealed wound.

Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with the World's Most Powerful Man


Nick Davies - 2014
    A royal correspondent for the News of the World was caught listening to the voice-mail messages of staff at Buckingham Palace. He and a private investigator went to prison for three months. But Nick Davies, a journalist at The Guardian, knew it didn’t add up. A source at the News of the World told him that not only was hacking routine, but live phone calls were being listened to; “Trojan” e-mails were being sent; bribes were paid to the police; houses were broken into. Davies spent the next four years uncovering the truth, and in July 2009, he broke the first big story: Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. company had secretly paid $1 million to silence three people whose lawyer proved that the News of the World had hacked into their voice-mail. Davies’s story quoted police sources admitting that there had in fact been thousands of victims. No other newspaper picked up the story, and News International retaliated with all of their resources.     Hack Attack is Davies’s mesmerizing account of his battle to prove the truth, describing how politicians who dared to stand up to Murdoch were punished by his journalists; how the lawyers who sued Murdoch were spied on; how public figures who went to court found their careers threatened. Hack Attack is a blow-by-blow account of the fall of an international media empire, by the lone journalist who dared to fight it.

American Hunger: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post Series


Eli Saslow - 2014
    These unsettling and eye-opening stories make for required reading, providing nuance and understanding to the complex matters of American poverty.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State


Glenn Greenwald - 2014
    That source turned out to be the twenty-nine-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency's widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security and information privacy.Now Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity eleven-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA's unprecedented abuse of power with documents from the Snowden archive. Fearless and incisive, No Place to Hide has already sparked outrage around the globe and been hailed by voices across the political spectrum as an essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.

The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America


Ethan Michaeli - 2014
    Robert S. Abbott founded The Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses," becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process. His successor wielded the newspaper’s clout to elect mayors and presidents, including Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, who would have lost in 1960 if not for TheDefender’s support. Along the way, its pages were filled with columns by legends like Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King. Drawing on dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, Ethan Michaeli constructs a revelatory narrative of race in America and brings to life the reporters who braved lynch mobs and policemen’s clubs to do their jobs, from the age of Teddy Roosevelt to the age of Barack Obama.

The 40s: The Story of a Decade


The New Yorker - 2014
    This is the era of Fat Man and Little Boy, of FDR and Stalin, but also of Casablanca and Citizen Kane, zoot suits and Christian Dior, Duke Ellington and Edith Piaf. The 1940s were when The New Yorker came of age. A magazine that was best known for its humor and wry social observation would extend itself, offering the first in-depth reporting from Hiroshima and introducing American readers to the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. In this enthralling book, masterly contributions from the pantheon of great writers who graced The New Yorker’s pages throughout the decade are placed in history by the magazine’s current writers. Included in this volume are seminal profiles of the decade’s most fascinating figures: Albert Einstein, Marshal Pétain, Thomas Mann, Le Corbusier, Walt Disney, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Here are classics in reporting: John Hersey’s account of the heroism of a young naval lieutenant named John F. Kennedy; A. J. Liebling’s unforgettable depictions of the Fall of France and D Day; Rebecca West’s harrowing visit to a lynching trial in South Carolina; Lillian Ross’s sly, funny dispatch on the Miss America Pageant; and Joseph Mitchell’s imperishable portrait of New York’s foremost dive bar, McSorley’s. This volume also provides vital, seldom-reprinted criticism. Once again, we are able to witness the era’s major figures wrestling with one another’s work as it appeared—George Orwell on Graham Greene, W. H. Auden on T. S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling on Orwell. Here are The New Yorker’s original takes on The Great Dictator and The Grapes of Wrath, and opening-night reviews of Death of a Salesman and South Pacific. Perhaps no contribution the magazine made to 1940s American culture was more lasting than its fiction and poetry. Included here is an extraordinary selection of short stories by such writers as Shirley Jackson (whose masterpiece “The Lottery” stirred outrage when it appeared in the magazine in 1948) and John Cheever (of whose now-classic story “The Enormous Radio” New Yorker editor Harold Ross said: “It will turn out to be a memorable one, or I am a fish.”) Also represented are the great poets of the decade, from Louise Bogan and William Carlos Williams to Theodore Roethke and Langston Hughes. To complete the panorama, today’s New Yorker staff, including David Remnick, George Packer, and Alex Ross, look back on the decade through contemporary eyes. Whether it’s Louis Menand on postwar cosmopolitanism or Zadie Smith on the decade’s breakthroughs in fiction, these new contributions are illuminating, learned, and, above all, entertaining.Including contributions by W. H. Auden • Elizabeth Bishop • John Cheever • Janet Flanner • John Hersey • Langston Hughes • Shirley Jackson • A. J. Liebling • William Maxwell • Carson McCullers • Joseph Mitchell • Vladimir Nabokov • Ogden Nash • John O’Hara • George Orwell • V. S. Pritchett • Lillian Ross • Stephen Spender • Lionel Trilling • Rebecca West • E. B. White • Williams Carlos Williams • Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Joan Acocella • Hilton Als • Dan Chiasson • David Denby • Jill Lepore • Louis Menand • Susan Orlean • George Packer • David Remnick • Alex Ross • Peter Schjeldahl • Zadie Smith • Judith Thurman

Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War


Francesca Borri - 2014
    Hundreds of journalists from every corner of the world rush to the frontier only to leave disappointed when Obama decides not to bomb. They leave behind 200,000 estimated victims, and more than half of a population of 22 million people dispersed or refugeed in nearby countries: the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII according to the UN.Francesca Borri is one of them. But she does not leave. She is 30 years old. For months she covers the battle of Aleppo as a freelance reporter. And she quickly realizes that to report a war is to hide with dozens of women and children, even a baby, born there, in a grave, "a piece of soil under the ground that is as expensive as three houses" or to scavenge for anything to burn for some warmth, "a broken slipper, the plastic hand of a toy" or to mistake bloody figments of skull for rubble. To report a war is also to meet with officials more worried about the stain of snow on their Clarks than the people they are supposed to help. It is to explain what is happening in Aleppo to journalists who have only been there once, on vacation, and bought a carpet. It is risking one's life because of the jealousy of a fellow reporter. And it is also about dreaming of driving at night with the windows open, about remembering impossible little things, the particular light on that day in that café at the beach when you were a kid, the eyes of people you love, all the minuscule simple joys that can be lost in a moment.Syrian Dust is a raw and powerful account of the Syrian war that throws the listener right in the middle of it, without any shelter.

Black Tornado: The Military Operations of 26/11


Sandeep Unnithan - 2014
    Ten highly motivated and trained terrorists, armed with guns, grenades and improvised explosive devices, slip past coastal security cordons on India's western seacoast in a fishing trawler. They board a rubber dinghy and disembark at Machhimar Nagar, Colaba, Mumbai. Over the next three agonizing days, India's 'Maximum City' is brought to its knees as the fidayeen wreak unprecedented havoc at pre-selected landmarks, holding India's commercial capital hostage. The 26/11 attacks, as they are now known, is widely regarded as the world's first hybrid terrorist attack. The attackers achieved through this long-drawn siege what Al Qaeda did through the high-visibility mass-casualty attack of 11 September 2001. The response to this attack was the first instance of all three wings of the Indian armed forces coming together to fight terror. The attacks tested the mettle of India's elite counter-terrorist force, the National Security Guard, whose strike element was entirely made up of army personnel; the navy dispatched its marine commandos in the initial hours of the attack; the air force flew the NSG into the city and air-dropped them over Nariman House. Black Tornado, as the operation was called by the NSG, is the story of these men called into action in the desperate hours following the most sensational terrorist attack the country has ever seen. Sandeep Unnithan puts together a blow-by-blow account of the terrorist strike and how the siege of Mumbai was thwarted by India's security forces.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War


James Risen - 2014
    Endless war corrupts absolutely.Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses — and until this book, it has worked very hard to cover them up.Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. FDR authorized the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans. Presidents Bush and Obama now must face their own reckoning. Power corrupts, but it is endless war that corrupts absolutely.

Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice


Scott Helman - 2014
    Through the eyes of seven principal characters including the bombers, the wounded, a cop, and a doctor, Boston Globe reporters Helman and Russell trace the paths that brought them together.

The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket


Osman Samiuddin - 2014
    Osman Samiuddin captures the jazba of the men who played for Pakistan, celebrates their headiest moments and many upheavals, and brings to life some of their most famous—and infamous—contests, tours and moments.Ambitious, spirited and often heartbreaking, 'The Unquiet Ones' is a comprehensive portrait of not just a Pakistani sport, but a national majboori, a compulsion whose outcome can surprise and shock, and can become the barometer of everyday life in Pakistan, tailing its ups and downs, its moods and character.

I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That


Ben Goldacre - 2014
    In 'Bad Science', Ben Goldacre hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science. In 'Bad Pharma', he put the $600 billion global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. Now the pick of the journalism by one of our wittiest, most indignant and most fearless commentators on the worlds of medicine and science is collected in one volume.

The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader


Ida B. Wells-Barnett - 2014
    Wells off a train for refusing to give up her seat. The experience shaped Wells’s career, and—when hate crimes touched her life personally—she mounted what was to become her life’s work: an anti-lynching crusade that captured international attention.This volume covers the entire scope of Wells’s remarkable career, collecting her early writings, articles exposing the horrors of lynching, essays from her travels abroad, and her later journalism. The Light of Truth is both an invaluable resource for study and a testament to Wells’s long career as a civil rights activist.

Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia


Lukas Straumann - 2014
    Historian and campaigner Lukas Straumann goes in search not only of the lost forests and the people who used to call them home, but also the network of criminals who have earned billions through illegal timber sales and corruption. Straumann singles out Abdul Taib Mahmud, current governor of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, as the kingpin of this Asian timber mafia. Taib's family – with the complicity of global financial institutions – have profited to the tune of 15 billion US dollars. Money Logging is a story of a people who have lost their ancient paradise to a wasteland of oil palm plantations, pollution, and corruption – and how they hope to take it back. Translated from German.“In thrilling chapters historian Lukas Straumann gives the portrait of a clan of kleptocrats, who, through the granting of timber concessions and export licenses, have managed to become billionaires.“ – Neue Zürcher Zeitung“One of the most comprehensive and brutally honest investigations into the intrigues of the Malaysian and international timber Mafia.“ – Süddeutsche Zeitung“A unique way of life in the rainforests has been destroyed in a single generation. Read this book and weep. But then get angry.“ – Wade Davis

And We Go On: A Memoir of the Great War


Will R. Bird - 2014
    Rattled, Bird rushed home to Nova Scotia and enlisted in the army to take his dead brother's place. And We Go On is a remarkable and harrowing memoir of his two years in the trenches of the Western Front, from October 1916 until the Armistice. When it first appeared in 1930, Bird's memoir was hailed by many veterans as the most authentic account of the war experience, uncompromising in its portrayal of the horror and savagery, while also honouring the bravery, camaraderie, and unexpected spirituality that flourished among the enlisted men. Written in part as a reaction to anti-war novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front, which Bird criticized for portraying the soldier as "a coarse-minded, profane creature, seeking only the solace of loose women or the courage of strong liquor," And We Go On is a nuanced response to the trauma of war, suffused with an interest in the spiritual and the paranormal not found in other war literature. Long out of print, it is a true lost classic that arguably influenced numerous works in the Canadian literary canon, including novels by Robertson Davies and Timothy Findley. In an introduction and afterword, David Williams illuminates Bird's work by placing it within the genre of Great War literature and by discussing the book's publication history and reception.

The Couch of Willingness: An Alcoholic Therapist Battles the Bottle and a Broken Recovery System


Michael Pond - 2014
    He loses his practice, his home and his family to alcoholism, ending up destitute in a rundown recovery home populated by a cast of characters straight out of Dickens.The Couch of Willingness is a real couch in that home, a couch where Pond is forced to sleep until he surrenders and admits he’s powerless over alcohol. But just when Pond gains any measure of sobriety, in sashays his other powerful addiction, Dana, a can of Red Bull in hand and a 26er of vodka in her purse.Pond’s harrowing two-year journey to sobriety takes stops in abandoned sheds, dumpsters, ditches, emergency wards, intensive care, and finally, prison. His riveting account crackles with raw energy and black humour as he plunges readers into a world few will ever have the misfortune to experience.Along the way, Michael the drunk finds himself shamed and stigmatized by the very system in which Michael the therapist thrived. The dissonance rankles for Pond and, by the end of the story, for the reader too.

Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It


Lisa Bloom - 2014
    Bloom now exposes the injustice, conducting new in-depth interviews with key trial participants and digging deeper into the evidence. Suspicion Nation outlines the six biggest mistakes made by the state of Florida that guaranteed it would lose this “winnable case,” and the laws and biases that created the conditions for this tragedy.The only nonwhite juror tells her story of painful isolation in the jury room. Rachel Jeantel, the state's star witness, reveals how poorly the state prepared her to testify and what went through her mind on the stand. The medical examiner reveals scientific evidence he wasn’t allowed to present. And a new examination of Trayvon's school suspensions raises questions about racial profiling, all in a country divided over issues of race, gun laws, and violence.Suspicion Nation is a riveting courtroom drama that shines a bright light on a case we only thought we knew.

All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid


Matt Bai - 2014
    W. Bush comfortably in the polls. And then: rumors of marital infidelity, an indelible photo of Hart and a model snapped near a fatefully named yacht (Monkey Business), and it all came crashing down in a blaze of flashbulbs, the birth of 24-hour news cycles, tabloid speculation, and late-night farce. Matt Bai shows how the Hart affair marked a crucial turning point in the ethos of political media-and, by extension, politics itself-when candidates' "character" began to draw more fixation than their political experience. Bai offers a poignant, highly original, and news-making reappraisal of Hart's fall from grace (and overlooked political legacy) as he makes the compelling case that this was the moment when the paradigm shifted-private lives became public, news became entertainment, and politics became the stuff of Page Six.

Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Struggle for Democracy


Dave Zirin - 2014
    But as the events were approaching, ordinary Brazilians were holding the country's biggest protest marches in decades.Sports journalist Dave Zirin traveled to Brazil to find out why. In a rollicking read that travels from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the fabled Maracan� Stadium to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Zirin examines Brazilians' objections to the corruption of the games they love; the toll such events take on impoverished citizens; and how taking to the streets opened up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports."Millions will enjoy the World Cup and Olympics, but Zirin justly reminds readers of the real human costs beyond the spectacle." --Kirkus Reviews

Kurt Cobain: The Last Session


Glenn O'Brien - 2014
    There’s a diverse range of shots of Cobain with fellow band members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl and on his own, posing, performing, and greeting fans. Jon Savage’s original interview, which appeared with Frohman’s photographs in the Observer is also reproduced, giving us Cobain in his own words. The book is a touching tribute to Cobain twenty years after his tragic demise, and following Nirvana’s recent induction in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Gotta Find a Home: Conversations with Street People


Dennis Cardiff - 2014
    Documenting their stories will, I hope, introduce them to the public in a non-threatening way. Some panhandlers look intimidating, but that disappears when one sees them laugh. A typical day for me involves taking the bus and walking two blocks to work. I pass Joy’s spot every day. I usually sit and talk with her for twenty to thirty minutes. Chester and Hippo may drop by to chat. Most afternoons, depending on weather, I walk two blocks to the park where the group of panhandlers varies in size from two to twenty or more. They don’t panhandle at the park. Like a soap opera, every day is different; some scenarios will carry over a few days or weeks. People will disappear for weeks or months due illness, rehab programs or incarceration. When I met Joy I was going through an emotional crisis. Meeting her and her friends – worrying about them and whether or not they would be able to eat and find a place to sleep – took my mind off my problems, that then, seemed insignificant. It was truly a life changing experience.

D-Day Through French Eyes: Normandy 1944


Mary Louise Roberts - 2014
       Silent parachutes dotting the night sky—that’s how one woman in Normandy in June 1944 learned that the D-Day invasion was underway. Though they yearned for liberation, the people of Normandy steeled themselves for further warfare, knowing that their homes, land, and fellow citizens would have to bear the brunt of the attack. In D-Day through French Eyes, Mary Louise Roberts resets our view of the usual stories of that momentous operation, taking readers across the Channel to view the invasion anew. Roberts builds her history from an impressive range of gripping first-person accounts from French citizens, reinvigorating a story we thought we knew. The result is a fresh perspective on the heroism, sacrifice, and achievement of D-Day.

Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling


Tom Babin - 2014
    But many of those bicycles disappear into basements and garages when the warm months end, parked there by owners fearful of the cold, snow and ice that winter brings. But does it have to be that way?Canadian writer and journalist Tom Babin started questioning this dogma after being stuck in winter commuter traffic one dreary and cold December morning and dreaming about the happiness that bicycle commuting had brought him all summer long. So he did something about it. He pulled on some thermal underwear, dragged his bike down from the rafters of his garage and set out on a mission to answer a simple but beguiling question: is it possible to happily ride a bike in winter? That question took him places he never expected. Over years of trial and error, research and more than his share of snow and ice, he discovered an unknown history of biking for snow and ice, and a new generation designed to make riding in winter safe and fun. He unearthed the world's most bike-friendly winter city and some new approaches to winter cycling from places all over the world. He also looked inward, to discover how the modern world shapes our attitudes toward winter. And perhaps most importantly, he discovered the unique kind of bliss that can only come by pedalling through softly falling snow on a quiet winter night.

Lucky Peach Issue 10: The Street Food Issue


David Chang - 2014
    Each issue focuses on a single theme, and explores that theme through essays, art, photography, and recipes. Less summary than survey, the street food issue takes to the world’s streets like a starved flâneur, flitting from birria in Mexico City to chicharron-studded tortillas in Buenos Aires, from chaat in Mumbai to gizzard noodle soup in Chiang Mai’s Lumpinee Boxing Stadium. This issue watches as children made stick bread in Copenhagen and shares a report on who’s eating all your cigarette butts (spoiler: microbes). For Jonathan Gold, the experience of eating street food is inseparable from time and place. Issue 10 also delves into the history of “Turkey in the Straw,” an ice-cream truck ditty that rings out across Los Angeles; spends a day with the Doughnut Luchador of East LA (doughnut slinger by day, luchador by night); and learns what happens, exactly, when you cook with charcoal, and what nixtamalizing does to corn. Plus, a look into the wondrous array of street sausages around the globe, the best of the wurst.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent


Salil Tripathi - 2014
    Between March and December 1971, the Pakistani army committed atrocities on an unprecedented scale in the country's eastern wing. Pakistani troops and their collaborators were responsible for countless deaths and cases of rape. Clearly, religion alone wasn't enough to keep Pakistan's two halves united. From that brutal violence, Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation, but the wounds have continued to fester. The gruesome assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's charismatic first prime minister and most of his family, the coups and counter-coups which followed, accompanied by long years of military rule were individually and collectively responsible for the country's inability to come to grips with the legacy of the Liberation War Four decades later, as Bangladesh tries to bring some accountability and closure to its blood-soaked past through controversial tribunals prosecuting war crimes, Salil Tripathi travels the length and breadth of the country probing the country's trauma through interviews with hundreds of Bangladeshis. His book offers the reader an unforgettable portrait of a nation whose political history since Independence has been marked more by tragedy than triumph.

Crossing the Sea: With Syrians on the Exodus to Europe


Wolfgang Bauer - 2014
    With colour photos.Award-winning journalist Wolfgang Bauer and photographer Stanislav Krupař were the first undercover reporters to document the journey of Syrian refugees from Egypt to Europe. Posing as English teachers in 2014, they were direct witnesses to the brutality of smuggler gangs, the processes of detainment and deportation, the dangers of sea-crossing on rickety boats, and the final furtive journey through Europe. Combining their own travels with other eyewitness accounts in the first book of reportage of its kind, Crossing the Sea brings to life both the systemic problems and the individual faces behind the crisis, and is a passionate appeal for more humanitarian refugee policies.

Football: Great Writing About the National Sport


John Schulian - 2014
    Now, in a landmark collection, The Library of America brings together the very best of their work: gems of deadline reportage, incisive longform profiles of football’s storied figures, and autobiographical accounts by players and others close to the game. Celebrating the sport without shying away from its sometimes devastating personal and social costs, the forty-four pieces gathered here testify to football’s boundless capacity to generate outsized characters and memorable tales.

Loathe Thy Neighbour (Leading Britain's Conversation)


James O'Brien - 2014
    It feeds a whole industry of commentators, pundits and politicians who take great delight in whipping us all into a frenzy, speaking for the ‘ordinary people’. But, when ugly prejudices are being fed by professionals grown fat on the fear and fury of their consumers, it is time to stop and ask whether the faceless group of immigrants really exists – or whether it just appeals to our basest fears.In this lively polemic, James O’Brien brings some common sense back into the discussion. Some people want to be frightened. They thrive on anger and division and upset. But many people don’t, and it is they who are most let down – most insulted – by the immigration debate. We don’t need to buy into this myth. There is no such thing as ‘immigrants’. There is no ‘they’. There is only ‘we’.

New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide


Anne Waddingham - 2014
    'New Hart's Rules' is a brand-new text that brings the principles of the old text (first printed in 1893) into the 21st century, providing answers to questions of editorial style for a new generation of professionals.

Seeing Things as They Are: Selected Journalism and Other Writings


George Orwell - 2014
    Selected by leading expert Peter Davison.Famous for his novels and essays, Orwell remains one of our very best journalists and commentators. Confronting social, political and moral dilemmas head-on, he was fearless in his writing: a champion of free speech, a defender against social injustice and a sharp-eyed chronicler of the age. But his work is also timeless, as pieces on immigration, Scottish independence and a Royal Commission on the Press attest. Seeing Things As They Are, compiled by renowned Orwell scholar Peter Davison, brings together in one volume many of Orwell’s articles and essays for journals and newspapers, his broadcasts for the BBC, and his book, theatre and film reviews. Little escaped Orwell’s attention: he writes about the Spanish Civil War, public schools and poltergeists, and reviews books from Brave New World to Mein Kampf. Almost half of his popular ‘As I Please’ weekly columns, written while literary editor of the Tribune during the 1940s, are collected here, ranging over topics as diverse as the purchase of rose bushes from Woolworth’s to the Warsaw Uprising. Whether political, poetic, polemic or personal, this is surprising, witty and intelligent writing to delight in. A mix of well-known and intriguing, less familiar pieces, this engaging collection illuminates our understanding of Orwell’s work as a whole.

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare


Gareth Porter - 2014
    Bush administration successfully waged their campaign claiming that Iran was trying covertly to acquire a nuclear weapon. Porter shows in detail that most of the so-called evidence for such a weapons program was of dubious origin, including the documents that allegedly originated from the laptop of an Iranian nuclear scientist. As Iran and the United States have engaged in serious negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, this book has provided crucial background material for those who want to make an independent assessment of the record, rather than relying on highly politicized allegations.

Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court


Damon Root - 2014
    Judicial deference is not only a touchstone of the Progressive left, for example, it is also a philosophy adopted by many members of the modern right. Today's growing camp of libertarians, however, has no patience with judicial restraint and little use for majority rule. They want the courts and judges to police the other branches of government, and expect Justices to strike down any state or federal law that infringes on their bold constitutional agenda of personal and economic freedom.Overruled is the story of two competing visions, each one with its own take on what role the government and the courts should play in our society, a fundamental debate that goes to the very heart of our constitutional system.

He Who Must Be Obeid: The Untold Story


Kate McClymont - 2014
    New South Wales has Eddie Obeid.Meet Australia's most corrupt politician whose brazen misdeeds were on a scale said to be "unexceeded since the days of the Rum Corps".From the shadows Obeid ran the state as his fiefdom, making and unmaking premiers. Along the way he pocketed tens of millions of dollars following corrupt deals. This explosive book chronicles the grubby deals the powerbroker had been making for decades before he was exposed. His tentacles stretched through all levels of government, encircling almost every precious resource - coal leases, Circular Quay cafes, marinas, even the state's water. All of them were secret money-spinners for Obeid and his family.Above ground, below ground, in the air, on the water, there was no domain beyond Obeid's grasp. Now, many of the key politicians of his era have given a candid account of Obeid's pernicious backroom influence.Following their groundbreaking investigations, the award-winning journalists Kate McClymont and Linton Besser have unearthed the vast but secret empire Obeid built over the decades, producing an authoritative account of how he got away with so much for so long.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2014


Sid HoltEmily Nussbaum - 2014
    Twenge's revealing look at fertility myths and baby politics (The Atlantic); Janet Reitman's controversial study of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ( "Rolling Stone"); Luke Mogelson's harrowing experience accompanying asylum seekers on a potentially deadly sea voyage to Australia ( "New York Times Magazine"); Lisa Miller's poignant report from Newtown, Connecticut, as the town tries to cope with the aftermath of one of the nation's worst mass shootings ( "New York"); Emily Nussbaum's critiques of gender and politics on television ( "The New Yorker"); and Witold Rybczynski's poetic engagement with modern architecture ( "Architect"). The collection concludes with the award-winning poem "Elegies" by Kathleen Ossip ( "Poetry") and "The Embassy of Cambodia," a short story by Zadie Smith ( "The New Yorker").

The Invisible Soldiers: How America Outsourced Our Security


Ann Hagedorn - 2014
    Now the PMSCs are a bona-fide industry, an indispensable part of American foreign and military policy. PMSCs assist US forces in combat operations and replace them after the military withdraws from combat zones; they guard our embassies; they play key roles in US counterterrorism strategies; and Homeland Security depends on them. Their services include maritime security, police training, drone operations, cyber security, and intelligence analysis (as Edward Snowden has famously revealed). Even the United Nations employs them.When did this happen? The turning point came when the US found itself in a prolonged war with Iraq, but without adequate forces. So the Bush Administration turned to the PMSCs to fill the gap. Private contractors and subcontractors eventually exceeded the traditional troops. The industry has never scaled back.Ann Hagedorn profiles the members of Congress who recognize the dangers of dependence on PMSCs, but have been unable to limit them or even determine their true scope. She takes us to the exclusive club in London where the PMSCs were created, and she reveals the key figure in the evolution of the industry. She introduces us to a US Army general who studies new developments, such as PMSCs’ drone operations, and worries about PMSCs potentially fighting American troops. The Invisible Soldiers will inspire a national dialogue about a little-known international industry on which our security rests.

The Best American Infographics 2014


Gareth Cook - 2014
    As we find ourselves in the era of big data, where information moves faster than ever, infographics provide us with quick, often influential bursts of art and knowledge — to digest, tweet, share, go viral. Best American Infographics 2014 captures the finest examples, from the past year, of this mesmerizing new way of seeing and understanding our world. Guest introducer Nate Silver brings his unparalleled expertise and lively analysis to this visually compelling new volume.

Rendezvous with Rebels: Journey to Meet India's Most Wanted Men


Rajeev Bhattacharyya - 2014
    His journey, which took three months and twenty days to complete, is unprecedented in Indian journalism. He visited the rebel bases in Eastern Nagaland, which covers a part of Myanmar's Sagaing Division, stayed in the ULFA camp and interviewed its chief of staff Paresh Baruah, as also chairman of the NSCN (Khaplang), S.S. Khaplang himself. He interacted with rebels from banned outfits like the NDFB, UPPK, PLA and other groups - for many of them, this was their first conversation with an Indian journalist. Bhattacharyya is one of very few journalists in the world to have made this journey, and among the fewer still to have had such intimate access.Rendezvous with Rebels is the story of that journey. It is as much a travel memoir as it is a hard-hitting political account of the fissures that mark the conflicts in India's Northeast and Myanmar's Sagaing Division. Bhattacharyya analyses the historical and current role of ULFA, NSCN and other rebel forces, and sizes up the current situation in Eastern Nagaland vis-a-vis the changes taking place in Myanmar specifically, and the subcontinent generally. It is, ultimately, an up-close examination of a very thorny conflict.

World War 3 Illustrated: 1979-2014


Peter Kuper - 2014
    This full-color retrospective exhibition is arranged thematically, and includes topic of housing rights, feminism, the environment, religion, police brutality, globalization, and depictions of conflicts from the Middle East to the Midwest. World War 3 Illustrated also illuminates the war we wage on each other—and sometimes the one taking place in our own minds. Contributors include Sue Coe, Eric Drooker, Fly, Sandy Jimenez, Sabrina Jones, Peter Kuper, Mac McGill, Kevin Pyle, Spain Rodriguez, Nicole Schulman, Seth Tobocman, Susan Willmarth, and dozens more.

The Best Most Useless Dress: Selected Writings of Claudia La Rocco


Claudia La Rocco - 2014
    Here the spaces of New York performance and the spaces of critical writing reveal themselves anew. She conjures the voices we want and need: critical and committed, self-reflexive, and brazenly addressing the interior and exterior states that define live art experiences.” — Jay Sanders, curator of performing arts, Whitney Museum of American Art Widely known as an incisive critic for the New York Times and Artforum, Claudia La Rocco is also a poet and performer whose hybrid texts are as mercurial and imaginative as her criticism. The Best Most Useless Dress reveals the breadth and depth of La Rocco's work, encompassing a decade's worth of poetry, essays, performance texts and reviews. Trespassing genre boundaries, these writings explore how movement and rhythm—in time, through space, across bodies, on the page —engender experience itself. With an introduction by poet Elizabeth Robinson.

The Lost World of Ladakh: Photographic journeys through Indian Himalaya 1931-1934 (AHP:31)


Rupert Wilmot, Roger Bates, Nicky Harman - 2014
    Rangdol, President of Tserkarmo Monastery, Ladakh, IndiaA superb collection of 150 black-and-white photographs of 1930s Ladakh, capturing its final days as a hub of trade routes between Tibet and Kashmir, India and Yarkand. These portraits of people, landscapes and Buddhist ceremonies taken by amateur photographer Rupert Wilmot, are notable for their careful composition, fine detail and engaging informality. They have been meticulously researched and captioned by Nicky Harman and Roger Bates, respectively, niece and nephew of Rupert Wilmot, and include maps, an introduction and a bibliography. Of considerable historical and ethnographic interest.Claude Rupert Trench Wilmot (1897-1961) was a British army officer stationed in India during the 1930s, and a talented amateur photographer. Nicky Harman translates Chinese literature, and was formerly a lecturer at Imperial College London.Roger Bates digitized the photographs. A retired engineer, he has many years of experience working in digital photography.What other writers have said about The Lost World of Ladakh:“A wonderfully elegaic set of photographs recording a lost world: an almost mediaeval Ladakh untouched by modernity and still living at the hub of the old trans-Himalayan trade routes, a timeless Central Asia where soot writing boards, itinerant monks, arcane astrologers, masked dancers and elaborate turquoise headdresses were ‎still common. ‎These skillfully restored photographs make me ache to cross again the snowy heights of the Zoji-la and to re-visit this most fascinating region to see what is left.”William Dalrymple, author of Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42“Rupert Wilmot’s pictures are a delight. The monastery images include a spectacular set of the religious dance-drama at Hemis. There is also a visual record of the trades that lifted so many of Ladakh's villagers above the poverty level: the bustle in Leh Bazaar, the interior of a serai, and caravans of sheep, donkeys and ponies. Perhaps the book’s most outstanding feature is the series of portraits of Wilmot’s fellow-travellers and other Ladakhis, most of them in relaxed and cheerful mode, rather than posing stiffly.” Dr Janet Rizvi, writer and historian of Ladakh, Kashmir and the western Himalaya “These illustrations, superb as photographs in their own right, capture in visual form the essence of Ladakhi life as it was in the 1930s. While the Ladakh pictured here is in many ways gone, its legacy lives on in the distinctive culture of present-day Ladakh, which cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of its history. In this book we have a unique and vital contribution to that history.”Dr Philip Denwood, Emeritus Reader in Tibetan Studies, SOAS, University of LondonPrice for printed book: $28.00/£24.74. Published by Asian Highlands Perspectives, print copies available here: ¬http://www.lulu.com/shop/roger-bates-...

Sundays at Eight: 25 Years of Stories from C-SPAN’S Q and Booknotes


Brian Lamb - 2014
    During that time, host Brian Lamb has invited people to his Capitol Hill studio for hour-long conversations about contemporary society and history. In today's soundbite culture that hour remains one of television's last vestiges of in-depth, civil conversation. First came C-SPAN's Booknotes in 1989, which by the time it ended in December 2004, was the longest-running author-interview program in American broadcast history. Many of the most notable nonfiction authors of its era were featured over the course of 800 episodes, and the conversations became a defining hour for the network and for nonfiction writers. In January 2005, C-SPAN embarked on a new chapter with the launch of Q and A. Again one hour of uninterrupted conversation but the focus was expanded to include documentary film makers, entrepreneurs, social workers, political leaders and just about anyone with a story to tell. To mark this anniversary Lamb and his team at C-SPAN have assembled Sundays at Eight, a collection of the best unpublished interviews and stories from the last 25 years. Featured in this collection are historians like David McCullough, Ron Chernow and Robert Caro, reporters including April Witt, John Burns and Michael Weisskopf, and numerous others, including Christopher Hitchens, Brit Hume and Kenneth Feinberg. In a March 2001 Booknotes interview 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt described the show's success this way: "All you have to do is tell me a story." This collection attests to the success of that principle, which has guided Lamb for decades. And his guests have not disappointed, from the dramatic escape of a lifelong resident of a North Korean prison camp, to the heavy price paid by one successful West Virginia businessman when he won 314 million in the lottery, or the heroic stories of recovery from the most horrific injuries in modern-day warfare. Told in the series' signature conversational manner, these stories come to life again on the page. Sundays at Eight is not merely a token for fans of C-SPAN's interview programs, but a collection of significant stories that have helped us understand the world for a quarter-century.

Dirty Politics: How Attack Politics is Poisoning New Zealand's Political Environment


Nicky Hager - 2014
    Many of these were between Slater and his personal allies on the hard right, revealing an ugly and destructive style of politics. But there were also many communications with the prime minister’s office and other Cabinet ministers in the National Government. They show us a side of Prime Minister John Key and his government of which most New Zealanders are completely unaware. Key has constructed an easy-going and relaxed public image, declaring to the public that ‘there’s no room for negative campaigning in New Zealand’. The reality is very different. His government has worked hand in hand with Slater and his collaborators in a sustained campaign of personal attacks against their political enemies, a deliberate but hidden strategy to avoid being held responsible for negative campaigning. Dirty Politics continues the story that began in Hager’s best-selling book The Hollow Men, investigating the way that underhand and deceptive politics poisons the political environment for everyone. If you care about integrity and ethics in politics, then this book will be disturbing but essential reading.

Free All Along: The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews


Stephen Drury Smith - 2014
    He spoke with luminaries such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Ellison, and Roy Wilkins. In Harlem, a fifteen-minute appointment with Malcolm X unwound into several hours of vivid conversation.A year later, Penn Warren would publish Who Speaks for the Negro?, a probing narrative account of these conversations that blended his own reflections with brief excerpts and quotations from his interviews. The large collection of audiotapes of his conversations, however, remained unknown to the public until rediscovered by scholars in recent years. A major contribution in their own right to our understanding of the struggle for civil rights, these remarkable long-form interviews are presented here as original documents with pressing relevance today.Published to coincide with a national radio documentary from American RadioWorks®, Free All Along brings to life the voices of America’s civil rights generation, including writers, political activists, religious leaders, and intellectuals.

War Porn


Christoph Bangert - 2014
    Using his images taken during the past ten years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza, Bangert started an experiment: What would happen if we suppressed our need for self-censorship for once? The result is as shocking as it is honest.Designed by Teun van der Heijden, Chiho Bangert and Klaus Kehrer, the book is also a collector's item:The small format, open spine binding, rough cover material and typewriter font are reminiscent of a handmade, personal journal. Some of the pages are not cut apart, but have a perforation which can easily be ripped open. This way the reader can decide just how much he wants to see, how much he can take. Spreads between these "hidden" images, naturally, are open to view.

Not All Superheroes Wear Capes


Danny Bent - 2014
     "Danny and his team set out to run across the entire country. Time and resources were limited, but their resolve was unshakeable. Thanks to their focus and determination, the amazing event that is One Run For Boston came to life. Hundreds of people were keen to participate, wanting to help, heal and honour those impacted by the events of April 15, 2013." Not All Superheroes Wear Capes is the sincere, sometimes painful, yet heart-warming and often funny, account of this extraordinary effort made be so many caring and giving individuals. Kudos to Danny and his team of heroes." Dave McGillivray (Director, Boston Marathon) "Not All Superheroes Wear Capes proves, once again, that just putting one foot in front of the other can change history." Kathrine Switzer (First woman to officially run the Boston Marathon) "I don't measure a runner by the number of steps they take, but by the number of ways they use running to make the world a better place. Running the One Run For Boston relay and meeting all the runners proved to me that running is the ultimate faith healer, restoring beleif not only in oneself but life's possibilities." Bart Yasso (Chief Running Officer, Runner's World)

Mercedes Wore Black


Andrea Brunais - 2014
    The only thing predictable is the unpredictability. When Janis is fired from her job at the newspaper, she focuses on the causes that matter to her. The environment and the economy. That embroils her in the 2014 election. When her good friend Mercedes encounters danger and is brutally murdered, Janis begins to investigate. She finds herself in a political maelstrom of big money, lottery, and interests with opposing goals. Will she be able to find the crux of the problem-and Mercedes' killer? Will she be able to expose corruption before anyone else is put in danger? Joe Guidry, Opinion Editor at The Tampa Tribune writes; "Fast-paced, exquisitely written, Mercedes Wore Black vividly depicts the underbelly of the newspaper industry and the all-too-real shenanigans of those who are ever willing to sacrifice Florida's natural treasures"

But What If We're Wrong?: One Evangelical's Take on the LGBTQ Issue


Jacci Turner - 2014
    With the church polarized on this issue, there is little room for dialogue. I'm not a theologian but I've been following Jesus for thirty seven and have spent most of those years in full-time ministry. I have seen firsthand His love of and commitment to the marginalized. This booklet follows my journey from being a board member of a local Exodus group, to an ally in the LGBTQ community.

Lucky Peach Issue 12: Seashore


David Chang - 2014
    Each issue focuses on a single theme, and explores that theme through essays, art, photography, and recipes.Lucky Peach #12 is all about food from littoral realms — the spaces where land meets sea. We dive for abalone and gather seaweed off the California coast; we harvest honey in the Bangladeshi Sundarabans; we go behind the scenes at a shrimp farm in Indonesia, and spend a Sunday at the cockle sheds in Leigh-on-Sea. We learn lots about edible sea beasts, from clams to hagfish to sea squirts. Anthony Bourdain takes us on a stroll down a beach town’s memory lane; Robert Sietsema samples practically all the clams on Long Island; Stuart Dybek catches himself a perfect breakfast in the Florida keys. We share recipes from Vietnam and Portugal and the Oregon coast—we aren’t shellfish. Also in this issue: a special, detachable sixteen-page Beach Reads comic book to take on your seaside jaunts, featuring comics by Jason Jägel, Tony Millionaire, and more, because it’s summertime, and the reading is easy.

With Light Steam: A Personal Journey through the Russian Baths


Bryon MacWilliams - 2014
    Over the course of nearly twelve years he reported on academe and the sciences for the world’s leading publications, and sought out the best baths—or banyas—everywhere he went. His story of Russia through its cult of steam begins on a frosty Sunday morning in a gypsy cab traveling to a bathhouse in Moscow, where the steam is conjured by an out-of-work carpenter named Grisha, who takes on MacWilliams as a kind of apprentice, allowing him into an otherwise closed world through which MacWilliams could see himself, and Russia, with different eyes. The Russian bathers insist, only half-jokingly, that the American is a spy. Writing in a highly engaging style, MacWilliams travels the country to convey the breadth of banya culture and what it means to steam, a process that is at once a simple cleansing and a deep purification. It awakens the body and quiets the mind, generating waves of good feeling akin to an endorphin high. Each chapter of this splendid book is an episode—spanning from several hours to several days—from the Far North, Moscow, the Ural Mountains, the Solovetsky Islands, and a southern stretch of the Volga River.With Light Steam, the title is derived from the phrase used in banyas in lieu of goodbye, is the only book in English devoted to the banya and the only volume in any language to present Russia through the lens of its bath culture, the most Russian thing there is. General readers and scholars alike will be enchanted with this unforgettable portrait of a people and a millennia-spanning tradition.

The Disunited States


Vladimir Pozner - 2014
    He found the nation and its people in a state of profound material and spiritual crisis, and took it upon himself to chronicle the life of the worker, the striker, the politician, the starlet, the gangster, the everyman; to document the bitter, violent racism tearing our society asunder, the overwhelming despair permeating everyday life, and the unyielding human struggle against all that. Pozner writes about America and Americans with the searing criticism and deep compassion of an outsider who loves the country and its people far too much to render anything less than a brutally honest portrayal. Recalling Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Pozner shatters the rules of reportage to create a complete enduring and profound portrait.

Lone Wolf: A Biography Of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky


Shmuel Katz - 2014
    He was instrumental in the formation of the Jewish state, teacher of Menachem Begin, towering charismatic figure and brilliant orator in 7 languages. Jabotinsky was a literary prodigy considered by Tolstoy and Pushkin to be one of Russia's most promising writers. He foresaw today's Arab-Israeli conflict and offered solutions.Lone Wolf is the brilliant biography of Jabotinsky by Shmuel Katz, meticulously researched, written in commanding style, with intense drama, creating a scholarly work that reads like a novel.

Into the Field: A Foreign Correspondent's Notebook


Tracy Dahlby - 2014
    In this memoir of covering a far-flung swath of Asia, he takes readers behind the scenes to reveal “the stories behind the stories”—the legwork and (mis)adventures of a foreign correspondent on a mission to be the eyes and ears of people back home, helping them understand the forces and events that shape our world.Into the Field centers on the travel and reporting Dahlby did for a half-dozen pieces that ran in National Geographic. The book tours the South China Sea during China’s rise as a global power, visits Japan in a time of national midlife crisis, and explores Southeast Asia during periods of political transition and tumult. Dahlby’s vivid anecdotes of jousting with hardboiled sea captains, communing with rebellious tribal chieftains, enduring a spectacular shipboard insect attack, and talking his way into a far place or out of a tight spot offer aspiring foreign correspondents a realistic introduction to the challenges of the profession. Along the way, he provides practical advice about everything from successful travel planning to managing headstrong local fixers and dealing with circumstances that can range from friendly to formidable. A knowledgeable, entertaining how-to book for observing the world and making sense of events, Into the Field is a must-read for student journalists and armchair travelers alike.

Math for Writers: Tell a Better Story, Get Published, Make More Money


Laura Laing - 2014
    Really. As a self-proclaimed math evangelist, she rejects the idea that you are not good at math. Did you forget the tools that you need to do the basic math required to get through the day? It's likely. Are you afraid of math? Maybe. Can you overcome all of these challenges? Abso-tootin'-lutely. A freelance writer for more than 13 years, Laing has been published in a wide range of publications, from Parade to Baltimore's City Paper. She also works with corporations, small businesses and non-profits in developing compelling content and marketing materials. With a degree in math education and experience teaching high school, she is a freelance curriculum developer, writing online lessons, video scripts and test items for a variety of clients.

A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg


Harry Kalmer - 2014
    It is the tale of their grandson Zweig, a young architect who has to leave Johannesburg when he falls in love with the wrong person, and of Marceline, a Congolese mother who flees to the city only to be caught up in a wave of xenophobic violence.Spanning more than a hundred years, A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg is a novel that documents and probes the lives of the inhabitants of this incomparable African city – the exiled, those returning from exile, and those who never left.

People We Meet: Unforgettable Conversations


National Public Radio - 2014
    Each story is introduced by the NPR host and offers a candid account of how the encounter was particularly meaningful to them. These are thought-provoking and emotionally resonant interviews with both the famous and the nearly anonymous; real people who reveal themselves over the course of a conversation in delightful, moving, and surprising ways.

Puck: What Fools These Mortals Be


Michael Alexander Kahn - 2014
    Published from 1877 to 1918, Puck was regularly a major political battleground and is credited with single-handedly thwarting the third-term ambitions of Ulysses Grant in 1880 and electing Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884. Puck did it with art - lavish, color, full-page and two-page centerspread cartoons. It was the first American magazine to publish color lithographs on a weekly basis and, for nearly forty years, was a training ground and showcase for some of the country's most talented cartoonists, led by its co-founder, Joseph Keppler. This retrospective contains nearly 300 full-color plates.

Bitcoin: Everything You Need to Know About the Digital Currency Revolution


Jose Pagliery - 2014
    The currency is anonymous and can be traded internationally—without the fees, government regulation, and oversight by banks and government-backed securities. But Bitcoin is not without risk—the currency’s value has fluctuated wildly since inception, and $400 billion suddenly disappeared overnight with the fall of Mt. Gox. Bitcoin: Everything You Need to Know About the Digital Currency Revolution provides a detailed look at the impact and future implications of digital currency. CNNMoney.com’s Jose Pagliery details digital currency’s origins, how the system works, and how Bitcoin is used today. The book also examines the economic impact of a digital, global currency, including perspectives from free market proponents such as Ron Paul to federal regulators who defend the need for central banks. Pagliery also explores the dark side of Bitcoin, including interviews with the FBI and a Bitcoin entrepreneur currently in federal prison. Bitcoin is essential reading for anyone looking to understand a financial innovation that will forever change how we think about money.

Kafkaland: Prejudice, Law and Counterterrorism in India


Manisha Sethi - 2014
    From Mumbai to Bangalore, to Delhi to Madhya Pradesh, it examines some of the most prominent terror cases to show that the hallmark of terror investigations is not simply a casual subversion of norms but cynical prejudice and brutal violence inflicted in the knowledge of absolute impunity. It also examines the disquieting trend of judicial abdication, wherein the courts indulgently ignore signs of torture, lack of evidence and absence of procedural norms, while trying terror cases.Kafkaland challenges the dominant narratives of counterterrorism and the emerging security-industrial complex. Kafkaland is where impunity, bias, suspicion are sustained by laws, where erosion of constitutional guarantees is advertised as internal security, where corporate greed masquerades as national interest.

The Illustrated Courtroom: 50 Years of Court Art


Elizabeth Williams - 2014
    Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2014.The first collection displaying the work of five of the most celebrated courtroom artists of all: Howard Brodie, Aggie Kenny, Bill Robles, Richard Tomlinson and Elizabeth Williams. Award-winning crime journalist and author Sue Russell wrote the text. Trials included range from Jack Ruby (who killed JFK's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald) to the Black Panthers to Charles Manson (on the front cover, lunging at the judge as a bailiff tackles him) to Michael Jackson to O.J. Simpson to Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff. These iconic illustrations — originally done for newspapers and television in courtrooms where cameras were not allowed — showcase this unique meeting of art and journalism. These are works of art, but they are also news—the images imprinted on the public’s mind from some of the biggestheadlines of the era, as revisited in these pages by writer Sue Russell.

Otaku Journalism: A Guide to Geek Reporting in the Digital Age


Lauren Orsini - 2014
     Otaku Journalism is the only new media guide for aspiring journalists and bloggers with geek inclinations. Unlike most journalism textbooks, this guide doesn’t just touch on new media reporting, but on new media subjects like fandom and Internet pop culture. It outlines the tools today's journalists need to have in their arsenal, and how to use them effectively. Personalized for the geek who wants to get serious about reporting, this book covers specific topics in the field of subculture and fandom journalism. From building a beat to covering events to interviewing your heroes, Otaku Journalism is a step by step guide to achieving your dreams. Early praise: “Lauren Orsini’s book is a must-read, full of real experience and a practical understanding of new media journalism.” —Aja Romano “As a self-made niche blogger that carved a career for myself in my topic of choice, Lauren’s book spoke to me directly. I fully support her approach, and I would recommend it to any writer that is pursuing a topic of interest or needs direction on how to focus their career. Lauren’s voice is concise and clear, and she knows just how to speak to other writers.” —Colette Bennett

Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World


Anya Schiffrin - 2014
    Muckraking journalism is part and parcel of American democracy. But how many people know about the role that muckraking has played around the world?This groundbreaking new book presents the most important examples of world-changing journalism, spanning one hundred years and every continent. Carefully curated by prominent international journalists working in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, Global Muckraking includes Ken Saro-Wiwa’s defense of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta; Horacio Verbitsky's uncovering of the gruesome disappearance of political detainees in Argentina; Gareth Jones’s coverage of the Ukraine famine of 1932–33; missionary newspapers’ coverage of Chinese foot binding in the nineteenth century; Dwarkanath Ganguli’s exposé of the British "coolie" trade in nineteenth-century Assam, India; and many others.Edited by the noted author and journalist Anya Schiffrin, Global Muckraking is a sweeping introduction to international journalism that has galvanized the world’s attention. In an era when human rights are in the spotlight and the fate of newspapers hangs in the balance, here is both a riveting read and a sweeping argument for why the world needs long-form investigative reporting.

The Ames Strain: The Mystery Behind America's Most Deadly Bioterror Attack


David Willman - 2014
    . . we have a twisted villain whose secret life is laid utterly bare. Unlike most mysteries, this one is literally true, carefully documented and skillfully told by one of America's finest investigative journalists."—John S. Carroll, Los Angeles TimesIn the dark days that followed September 11, America faced its first major bioterror attack that led to five deaths, seventeen infections, and a seven-year hunt for the culprit. The Ames Strain is an engrossing and unsparing portrait of Bruce Edwards Ivins, the deeply troubled US Army scientist that the United States Department of Justice concluded to be the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks. David Willman uncovers the struggle for control within the FBI's anthrax investigation, the missteps of an overzealous press, and how a cadre of government officials disregarded scientific evidence in order to spin the attacks into a basis for war with Iraq.With bioweapons continuing to make the news, the lessons from the Ivins case and Willman's thorough investigation are more relevant than ever.David Willman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist whose work has prompted major public health reforms. His reporting for the Los Angeles Times brought to light the pivotal developments surrounding the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. Willman's groundbreaking reporting in 2008 on the investigation of the deadly anthrax mailings was cited by the Scripps Howard Foundation as the year's best Washington-based coverage.

Libyan Sugar


Michael Christopher Brown - 2014
    A record of Michael Christopher Brown's life both inside and outside Libya during that year, the work is about a young man going to war for the first time and his experience of that age-old desire to get as close as possible to a conflict in order to discover something about war and something about himself, perhaps a certain definition of life and death.

The Baffler: No. 25


John Summers - 2014
    The None and the Many

To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools


William Sturkey - 2014
    One of the most successful initiatives of Freedom Summer, more than forty Freedom Schools opened doors to thousands of young African American students. Here they learned civics, politics, and history, curriculum that helped them instead of the degrading lessons supporting segregation and Jim Crow and sanctioned by White Citizen's Councils. Young people enhanced their self-esteem and gained a new outlook on the future. And at more than a dozen of these schools, students wrote, edited, printed and published their own newspapers. For more than five decades, the Mississippi Freedom Schools have served as powerful models of educational activism. Yet, little has been published that documents black Mississippi youths' responses to this profound experience.

Revelations (Ngāti Dread, #3)


Angus Gillies - 2014
    The Rastas terrorised the small town of Ruatoria on the East Coast of New Zealand's North Island from 1985 to 1990. During this time more than thirty buildings, including houses, businesses, the police and fire stations, a primary school, churches and a marae, were burned. One Rasta was beheaded by another and the leader of the sect was shot and later died on the operating table. Revelations covers the latter years of the Rastas' reign of terror and the fatal clash between Rasta leader Chris Campbell and vigilante Luke Donnelly.

After Freedom: The Rise of the Post-Apartheid Generation in Democratic South Africa


Katherine S. Newman - 2014
      This spring, South Africa will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of apartheid and the first free elections. Although the country has come far, frustration is growing as inequalities that once divided the races now grow within them. In After Freedom, award-winning sociologist Katherine S. Newman and South African expert Ariane De Lannoy profile seven people—Black, White, “Coloured,” and immigrant—to reveal what life is like in South Africa today. These on-the-ground portraits offer an intimate look at the rising generation of young people and explore what the complex political landscape means to the average person. After Freedom is a timely look at how the generation that came of age post-apartheid is grappling with a tenuous democracy in a globalized economy.

Daunderlust: Dispatches from Unreported Scotland


Peter Ross - 2014
    A selection of the best are collected here, for the first time. Each a gem of insight and wit, they provide a piece-by-piece portrait of a nation as it changes.

Ebola: Story of an Outbreak


Laurie Garrett - 2014
     In this masterful account of the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Zaire, Garrett, now the Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, shows how superstition and fear, compounded by a lack of resources, education, and clearheaded government planning have plagued our response to Ebola. In an extensive new introduction, Garrett forcefully argues that learning from past outbreaks is the key to solving the Ebola crisis of 2014. In her account of the 1995 Zaire outbreak, first published in her bestselling book Betrayal of Trust, Garrett takes readers through the epidemic's course-beginning with the Kikwit villager who first contracted it from an animal encounter while chopping wood for charcoal deep in the forest. As she documents the outbreak in riveting detail, Garrett shows why our trust in world governments to protect people's health has been irrevocably broken. She details the international community's engagement in the epidemic's aftermath: a pattern of response and abandonment, urgency that devolves into amnesia. Ebola: Story of an Outbreak is essential reading for anyone who wants to comprehend Ebola, one of mankind's most mysterious, malicious scourges. Garrett has issued a powerful call for governments, citizens, and the disease-fighting agencies of the wealthy world to take action.

St Petersburg: Shadows of the Past


Catriona Kelly - 2014
    Petersburg is one of the world’s most alluring cities—a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city’s pre-1917 and Second World War history than with its recent past. In this beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly shows how creative engagement with the past has always been fundamental to St. Petersburg’s residents. Weaving together oral history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts, journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now. Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city’s glamorous center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and elusive place.

Robert Fisk on Egypt: A Revolution Betrayed: A powerful collection of reportage on Egypt's cycle of awakening and relapse


Robert Fisk - 2014
    In less than four years, its people have come full circle. A sclerotic, cynical, seemingly immovable military regime, disguised by a fig-leaf of ostensible representation, was swept away on a joyous tsunami of popular idealism; a corrupt dictator was ousted, tried and jailed; free elections were held, a new president peacefully installed, and a new age of freedom and democracy seemed genuinely possible. Then, with tragic predictability, the new regime degenerated. Corruption, incompetence and repression provoked a counter-revolution; the elected president was ousted and jailed, his supporters massacred or rounded up. The old dictator was freed (for a while), the opposition was outlawed, the faceless men of the military resumed and tightened their grip on the reins of power – and thousands of ordinary Egyptians were left wondering what all their suffering and sacrifice had been for. No commentator is better qualified to tell this tragic tale than Robert Fisk, unflinching critic of the Mubarak regime and acclaimed chronicler of Middle-Eastern affairs for The Independent for 25 years. This powerful anthology of his journalism describes the full cycle of Egypt’s awakening and relapse, episode by episode, as it happened – from the first stirrings of unrest to the glorious dawn of Tahrir Square, and the days of shame and atrocity that followed. Told with rare insight into both Egyptian culture and the hypocrisy of the West, this is history at its most compelling, written by one of the very greatest commentators on the Arab world.

Fire the Cops!: Essays, Lectures, and Journalism


Kristian Williams - 2014
    these subjects and more are examined in this collection of essays by veteran activist Kristian Williams, released to mark ten years since the first publication of his book Our Enemies in Blue in 2004. In section one, focusing in on police murders in Portland, Seattle, and Oakland, Fire the Cops! examines the relationship between working-class communities (predominantly Black) and the police, showing how police violence and impunity function to buttress the power of the State, and arguing that the left should recognize the political content of much of the violence directed against police.Next, in section two, Williams traces the history of the sometimes confusing relationship between the police and organized labor, from the age of the Pinkertons to the much publicized involvement of police in the protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2011, and varied police responses to the Occupy movement around the same time. Addressing claims that "police are workers too," Williams shows how any instances of police acting in solidarity with the working class have been atypical, inconsistent, and fleeting at best.By far the most in-depth section of Fire the Cops! is the third section, a study of the role of police in counterinsurgency operations. Drawing on a range of sources, including activist reports and the U.S. Army's Field Manual on Counterinsurgency, Williams shows how, from "anti-gang" operations to "community policing," military theories of repression are increasingly being applied in oppressed communities across the United States.Finally, in the concluding section, Fire the Cops! takes on some of the questions facing those of us engaged in copwatch activities, as well as the position that the police should be abolished, not reformed. Here, Williams maps out some of the conclusions this practice and position imply for our communities and movements, both today and tomorrow.Fire the Cops! is a collection of several essays written in the decade following the publication of Our Enemies in Blue, years in which Williams was heavily involved in the Rose City Copwatch organization in Portland. This book can be read as a supplement to Our Enemies in Blue, or on its own, as a series of attempts to apply historical lessons to circumstances as they unfold.Including both reports from the frontlines and reconnaissance into the plans and practices of our opponents, Fire the Cops! is intended to help inform future critique, and further struggle.Fire the Cops! includes several photographs by Bette Lee, documenting protests against the police in Portland, Oregon, during the years these essays were being written.

The Monsters of Education Technology


Audrey Watters - 2014
    Its monsters. These were originally delivered as lectures and keynotes during 2014, but have been edited and compiled here.

America's Battle for Media Democracy


Victor Pickard - 2014
    Drawing from extensive archival research, the book uncovers the American media system's historical roots and normative foundations. It charts the rise and fall of a forgotten media reform movement to recover alternatives and paths not taken. As much about the present and future as it is about the past, the book proposes policies for remaking media based on democratic values for the digital age.

The Struggle for Iraq's Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy


Zaid Al-Ali - 2014
    This forthright book fills in the gap. Zaid Al-Ali, an Iraqi lawyer with direct ties to the people of his homeland, to government circles, and to the international community, provides a uniquely insightful and up-to-date view of Iraq’s people, their government, and the extent of their nation’s worsening problems. The true picture is discouraging: murderous bombings, ever-increasing sectarianism, and pervasive government corruption have combined to prevent progress on such crucial issues as security, healthcare, and power availability. Al-Ali contends that the ill-planned U.S. intervention destroyed the Iraqi state, creating a black hole which corrupt and incompetent members of the elite have made their own. And yet, despite all efforts to divide them, Iraqis retain a strong sense of national identity, Al-Ali maintains. He reevaluates Iraq’s relationship with itself, discusses the inspiration provided by the events of the Arab Spring, and redefines Iraq’s most important struggle to regain its viability as a nation.

Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins


Noah Isenberg - 2014
    Ulmer is perhaps best known today for Detour, considered by many to be the epitome of a certain noir style that transcends its B-list origins. But in his lifetime he never achieved the celebrity of his fellow Austrian and German émigré directors—Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Robert Siodmak. Despite early work with Max Reinhardt and F. W. Murnau, his auspicious debut with Siodmak on their celebrated Weimar classic People on Sunday, and the success of films like Detour and Ruthless, Ulmer spent most of his career as an itinerant filmmaker earning modest paychecks for films that have either been overlooked or forgotten. In this fascinating and well-researched account of a career spent on the margins of Hollywood, Noah Isenberg provides the little-known details of Ulmer’s personal life and a thorough analysis of his wide-ranging, eclectic films—features aimed at minority audiences, horror and sci-fi flicks, genre pictures made in the U.S. and abroad. Isenberg shows that Ulmer’s unconventional path was in many ways more typical than that of his more famous colleagues. As he follows the twists and turns of Ulmer’s fortunes, Isenberg also conveys a new understanding of low-budget filmmaking in the studio era and beyond.

No Dreadlocks No Cry (Ngāti Dread, #2)


Angus Gillies - 2014
    The Rastas had a mission to return local land to the original Ngati Porou owners and in that period more than 30 buildings were burned, including houses, a police station, a fire station, businesses, a school, churches and a marae. No Dreadlocks No Cry covers most of the major fires and revisits the famous trial of five detectives for the kidnap and assault of Rasta Dick Maxwell, who claimed police had cut off his dreadlocks. It also includes a fascinating interview with Dion Hutana, the man convicted of escaping from prison and burning down Ngati Porou Marae.

Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States


Christopher Vials - 2014
    Traversing the Popular Front of the 1930s, the struggle against McCarthyism in the 1950s, the Black Power movement of the 1960s, and the AIDS activism of the 1980s, Haunted by Hitler highlights the value of "antifascist" cultural politics, showing how it helped to frame the national discourse. Christopher Vials examines the ways in which anxieties about fascism in the United States have been expressed in the public sphere, through American television shows, Off-Broadway theater, party newspapers, bestselling works of history, journalism, popular sociology, political theory, and other media. He argues that twentieth-century liberals and leftists were more deeply unsettled by the problem of fascism than those at the center or the right and that they tirelessly and often successfully worked to counter America's fascist equivalents.

The Progeny: Justice William J. Brennan's Fight to Preserve the Legacy of New York Times v. Sullivan


Lee Levine - 2014
    

Ricochet: Two Women War Reporters and a Friendship Under Fire


Mary Jo McConahay - 2014
    The author, bedeviled by stress and feelings of abandonment, hangs on by her fingernails to reporting while her dear friend “just can’t take another picture of a dead body” and throws herself into teaching photography to children who live in a garbage dump. Big questions quietly roil their lives—What is our responsibility to history? To individuals?—until unexpectedly, they approach an answer together, when a child from the dump goes missing.

HULK VS. JAMES BOND: STARING INTO THE ID OF A BONER INCARNATE


Film Crit Hulk! - 2014
    A four-day, Film Crit Hulk-sized examination into every single James Bond film.

The Nuclear Terrorist: His Financial Backers and Political Patrons in the US and Abroad


Robert Gleason - 2014
    . . with catastrophic results.Taking no prisoners, Robert Gleason's The Nuclear Terrorist demonstrates how time and again both the Bush and Obama administrations have placed politics and profiteering over public safety; how the government has failed to effectively guard and regulate a "peaceful" nuclear industry that is both cataclysmically expensive and apocalyptically dangerous; how America's nuclear power plants remain vulnerable to both physical and cyber attacks; and how our elected leaders and their advisors continue to do business with rogue states, untrustworthy and unstable "allies," and terrorist backers, while turning a blind eye to the all-but-inevitable consequences of such deals with the devil.

The Repercussions


Catherine Hall - 2014
    But images and events of her recent past and the reading of her great-grandmother Elizabeth's diary haunt her night and day, forcing Jo to come to terms with demons she thought she could leave behind.Written as a long confession to Jo's former lover Susie, alternating with Elizabeth's account of nursing Indian soldiers at the Brighton Pavilion in 1915, The Repercussions--Catherine Hall's most ambitious novel to date--is a sweeping narrative dealing with the psychological and emotional reality of war, as well as race, guilt, love, and loss.

Inside Coda


Steen Frank - 2014
    More in-depth than the built-in Help, and a lot faster than Googling around, you'll be a Coda expert in the of an eye.