Books on Human Rights

Darfur Diaries

Stories of Survival

By Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro

In November 2004, three independent filmmakers traveled to eastern Chad and crept across the border into Darfur. Improvising as they went, they spoke with dozens of Darfurians, learning about their history, hopes, and fears, and the resilience and tragedy of their everyday lives.

Darfur Diaries was selected as a "Book of Conscience" by the American Booksellers Association and the Genocide Prevention Project to help commemorate April 2009 as Genocide Prevention Month.

Nothing but an Unfinished Song

Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation

By Denis O'Hearn

The life, resistance, and death of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands inspired millions around the world. This is his story.

Tainted Legacy

9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights

By William Schulz

The executive director of Amnesty International USA examines the relationship between the growth of terror around the world and the violation of human rights. "In these times of trouble, terror, and confusion, we need guidance more than ever about how to ensure that humanity's struggle for its basic rights will continue to advance. Tainted Legacy provides that guidance."
--Ariel Dorfman

Freedom Next Time

Resisting the Empire

By John Pilger

Collateral Damage

America's War Against Iraqi Civilians

By Laila Al-Arian and Chris Hedges

In this devastating exposé, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian reveal the terrifying reality of daily civilian life in Iraq at the hands of U.S. troops. Collateral Damage is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with combat veterans who explain the tactics and operations that have turned many Iraqis against the U.S. military.

Michael Schwartz wrote on The Huffington Post that the book "offers the best account so far of what Hedges calls the 'vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq,' and its impact on the troops who are trained and ordered to administer it."

Halliburton's Army

How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War

By Pratap Chatterjee

Watch Pratap Chatterjee discuss Halliburton's Army on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

Collateral Damage (paperback)

America's War Against Iraqi Civilians

By Laila Al-Arian and Chris Hedges

In this devastating exposé, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian reveal the terrifying reality of daily civilian life in Iraq at the hands of U.S. troops. Collateral Damage is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with combat veterans who explain the tactics and operations that have turned many Iraqis against the U.S. military.

China Safari

On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa

By Serge Michel, Michel Beuret and Paolo Woods

China Safari tells the amazing—and largely unknown—story of the rise of China's economic empire in Africa and how it will change the 21st century and eclipse the role of the West in Africa. China is now Africa’s second largest business partner with trade now at more than $100 billion a year, and growing; it seems destined to succeed where the West has failed. But is China starting to repeat the imperial arrogance of earlier colonial powers? The authors try to answer this question, unearthing the extraordinary human stories underlying China's new ventures in Africa.

Belching Out the Devil

Global Adventures with Coca-Cola

By Mark Thomas

Stripping Bare the Body

Politics Violence War

By Mark Danner

Stripping Bare the Body is a book of stories telling how politics–and its handmaidens: violence and war–is practiced in the brutal worlds of Iraq, the Balkans, Haiti, the "black sites" and Washington, D.C. It shows at close hand how terrorism works and how war looks and smells and feels. As a newly installed Haitian president told Mark Danner, then on assignment for The New Yorker in riot-torn Port-au-Prince, "Violence strips bare a society's body, the better to place the stethoscope and track the life beneath the skin."

"With this vivid and deeply disturbing book, Mark Danner affirms his standing as our preeminent guide to the world's broken places, littered with the detritus of American carelessness and delusions."
–Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism