Book picks similar to
Minamata by W. Eugene Smith
photography
non-fiction
japan
history
Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love
Wendy Ruderman - 2014
J. English's Savage City comes this shocking true story of the biggest police corruption scandal in Philadelphia history, a tale of drugs, power, and abuse involving a rogue narcotics squad, a confidential informant, and two veteran journalists whose reporting drove a full-scale FBI probe, rocked the City of Brotherly Love, and earned a Pulitzer Prize.In 2003, Benny Martinez became a Confidential Informant for a member of the Philadelphia Police Department's narcotics squad, helping arrest nearly 200 drug and gun dealers over seven years. But that success masked a dark and dangerous reality: the cops were as corrupt as the criminals they targeted.In addition to fabricating busts, the squad systematically looted mom-and-pop stores, terrorizing hardworking immigrant owners. One squad member also sexually assaulted three women during raids. Frightened for his life, Martinez turned to Philadelphia Daily News reporters Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker.Busted chronicles how these two journalists-both middle-class working mothers-formed an unlikely bond with a convicted street dealer to uncover the secrets of ruthless kingpins and dirty cops. Professionals in an industry shrinking from severe financial cutbacks, Ruderman and Laker had few resources-besides their own grit and tenacity-to break a dangerous, complex story that would expose the rotten underbelly of a modern American city and earn them a Pulitzer Prize. A page-turning thriller based on superb reportage, Busted is modern true crime at its finest.
The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
Benjamin Wallace - 2008
Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries.
Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids
Andrei Tarkovsky - 2004
The melancholy of seeing things for the last time is the highly mysterious and poetic essence that these images leave with us. It is as though Andrei wanted to transmit his own enjoyment quickly to others. And they feel like a fond farewell."Tonino Guerra, from the IntroductionThis beautifully produced book comprises sixty Polaroid photographs of Andrei Tarkovsky's friends and family, taken between 1979 and 1984 in his native Russia and in Italy, where he spent time in political exile.The size of the Polaroids is exactly as presented in the book, including the frame. The book may therefore be viewed as a facsimile edition. 60 color illustrations.
Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See
Jonathan Rosenbaum - 2000
Movie Wars cogently explains how movies are packaged, distributed, and promoted, and how, at every stage of the process, the potential moviegoer is treated with contempt. Using examples ranging from the New York Times’s coverage of the Cannes film festival to the anticommercial practices of Orson Welles, Movie Wars details the workings of the powerful forces that are in the process of ruining our precious cinematic culture and heritage, and the counterforces that have begun to fight back.
Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics in the Age of Crisis
George Monbiot - 2017
It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. Only a positive vision can replace it, a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better world.George Monbiot shows how new findings in psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology cast human nature in a radically different light: as the supreme altruists and cooperators. He shows how we can build on these findings to create a new politics: a “politics of belonging.” Both democracy and economic life can be radically reorganized from the bottom up, enabling us to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted our ambitions for a better society.Urgent, and passionate, Out of the Wreckage provides the hope and clarity required to change the world.
The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
William Langewiesche - 2002
It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free.With typically understated lyricism, William Langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises--licit and illicit--that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems--shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews of the gargantuan ships, and the growth of two pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism.This is the outlaw sea that Langewiesche brings startlingly into view. The ocean is our world, he reminds us, and it is wild.
These Are Not Gentle People
Andrew Harding - 2019
Some were in fury. Others treated the whole thing as a joke - a game. The events of the next two hours would come to haunt them all. They would rip families apart, prompt suicide attempts, breakdowns, divorce, bankruptcy, threats of violent revenge and acts of unforgivable treachery.These Are Not Gentle People is the story of that night, and of what happened next. It's a courtroom drama, a profound exploration of collective guilt and individual justice, and a fast-paced literary thriller.Award-winning foreign correspondent and author Andrew Harding traces the impact of one moment of collective barbarism on a fragile community - exploding lies, cover-ups, political meddling and betrayals, and revealing the inner lives of those involved with extraordinary clarity.The book is also a mesmerising examination of a small town trying to cope with a trauma that threatens to tear it in two - as such, it is as much a journey into the heart of modern South Africa as it is a gripping tale of crime, punishment and redemption.When a whole community is on trial, who pays the price?
Propaganda
Edward L. Bernays - 1928
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”—Edward Bernays, PropagandaA seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays (1891–1995), pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed “engineering of consent.” During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would “Make the World Safe for Democracy.” The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses.This is the first reprint of Propaganda in over 30 years and features an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.
Fatal Sunset: Deadly Vacations
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff - 2012
Over 170 people have disappeared from cruise ships around the world since 1995, several under very suspicious circumstances. Others have their lives senselessly stolen, like the 8-year-old boy sucked into an unprotected pool drain at a major resort, leaving his mother crying out his name as security staff held her at gunpoint. Or 22-year old Nolan Webster, denied proper medical care after being pulled unconscious from a Cancun resort pool, only to have his dead body left in plain view for hours and his parents billed for his room.Vacations are meant to be joyous and fun. Sometimes terrible things happen unexpectedly. A parasailing newlywed plummets hundreds of feet to her death on the last day of her honeymoon when her harness snaps in midair. Hikers make a fatal plunge on an improperly-marked Kauai cliffside trail. And of course, there's every mother's nightmare: the disappearance of Natalee Holloway while on a high-school graduation trip to Aruba with members of her senior class.
Tescopoly
Andrew Simms - 2007
In his analysis, Andrew Simms, director of the acclaimed think-and-do-tank the New Economics Foundation, and in association with tescopoly.org, tackles a subject that none of us can afford to ignore - what supermarkets in general, and Tesco in particular, are doing to the way we think we live our lives.
True Crime Stories Volume 5: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology)
Jack Rosewood - 2016
You will be glued to the pages as you read about high profile true crime murder cases, such as the murder of Laci Peterson, and the murder trial of actor Robert Blake, while learning about some lesser known yet equally notorious murder trials. You will follow criminal investigations into cold murder cases that were once thought to be unsolvable, but through a combination of scientific advances, good police work, and some luck, homicide detectives were able to give the victims’ families closure. Although most of the cases profiled in this book are clearly true crime stories, one case, the story of the famous doctor Jack Kevorkian, concerns changing legal interpretations of what constitutes murder in the United States of America. Other cases profiled involve privileged individuals who had plenty of money, but resorted to murder out of greed and selfishness. You will also read about one privileged woman, actress Dominque Dunne, who had her whole life in front of her, only to have it ended by a jealous lover who could not handle her success and privilege. Open the cover of this book, if you dare, and learn about some of the most intriguing high profile crimes and true murder to happen in the last 100 years. You may want to share this book with a friend, though, because as intriguing as the following cases are, they are also shocking and disturbing.
American Music
Annie Leibovitz - 2003
By 1973 she was the magazine's chief photographer. Since 1983 Annie Leibovitz has worked closely with Vanity Fair, who will be producing a special music issue to coincide with the book.Her subjects include Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, Dolly Parton, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry and even Philip Glass. She has created a body of new work for the book, covering the landscape of American music - the juke joints of the Delta, Graceland, B. B. King at his hometown of Indianola in Mississippi and the Carter family in Virginia.The book is a tribute to a great culture in its widest form by the photographer who has understood more than anybody the power of the iconic image.
Landscape Photography On Location: Travel, Learn, Explore, Shoot
Thomas Heaton - 2016
It is packed with stories and anecdotes from behind the image. There are tips on using social media to get your images seen by millions. The book offers advice on hiking, travel and the great outdoors as well as useful information on technical subjects such as where to focus and shooting RAW. After reading this book, not only will your photography start to improve, but you will be inspired to get up and out at dawn and stay out until dark. This book is for the beginner as well as the seasoned professional. Travel, Learn, Explore, Shoot.
Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs
Daido Moriyama - 2019
In
Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs
, he offers a unique opportunity for fans to learn about his methods, the cameras he uses, and the journeys he takes with a camera.
Dog Dogs
Elliott Erwitt - 1998
According to him, it just happened that way. And that one day, when he was looking through his boxes of photographs, he realized that somehow or other dogs had crept into a fair proportion of them. Not that they were dog portraits. More just photographs with dogs in. Pictures of poodles taken at dog shows, of Airedales fetching sticks in the park, of crowds of dogs larking around together, of Highland Terriers jumping in the air for joy - and hundreds of images of dogs walking, being carried, sitting on hearthrugs, beaches, riverbanks, sofas, park benches.DogDogs is a delightful object presenting the largest selection ever published of Erwitt's dog photographs. Any dog-lover's dream title, it contains 500 pictures, all of them printed full-bleed and in arresting duotone. Also included is a captivating essay by P G Wodehouse, who was an admirer of Erwitt's work and a keen dog-owner himself. As he says, ' ... what superb photographs these are. It does one good to look at them. There is not one sitter in his gallery who does not melt the heart.'