Books on Journalism

Altered States of America

Outlaws and Icons, Hitmakers and Hitmen

By Richard Stratton

Richard Stratton's years as an international marijuana smuggler, his eight-year stint in the federal prison system, and subsequent ascendance to acclaimed author and filmmaker give his journalism a unique credibility. Altered States of America is a riveting collection of his work.

Kill the Messenger

How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

By Nick Schou

Madame Dread

By Kathie Klarreich

Civil violence, mass slaughter, coups and US intervention: Kathie Klarreich saw all this up close and on a daily basis in Haiti as a reporter for NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, NBC News and Time during the past decade. This compelling chronicle of tumultuous political events is also an intensely personal memoir of her experiences throughout Haiti's turbulent years.

Deserter from Death

Dispatches from Western Europe 1950-2000

By Daniel Singer

From his early reporting for The Economist to his final years as The Nation's celebrated European correspondent, Daniel Singer covered the momentous events of his time with "intellectual and moral clarity," as George Steiner put it. Deserter from Death collects Singer's writings from the Algerian crisis in the late fifties, through the world-shaking events of May '68, to the post-Reagan, post-Thatcher era.

The Best of The Nation

Selections From the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture

"[This anthology] is like a cocktail party thrown by the Merry Pranksters of the intellectual left." --St. Petersburg Times

I See Black People

The Rise and Fall of African American-Owned Television and Radio

By Kristal Brent Zook

Read the book review on Publishers Weekly.

Blackwater (paperback)

The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

By Jeremy Scahill

On September 16, 2007, Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries opened fire in Baghdad's Nisour Square, killing 17 Iraqi civilians, among them women and children. In this fully revised and updated paperback, award-winning investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill reveals the explosive story of the company that has become the new face of the U.S. war machine.

Jeremy Scahill recently won the prestigious 2007 George Polk Book Award.

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."

The Age of the Warrior

Selected Essays

By Robert Fisk

"Robert Fisk is one of the outstanding reporters of this generation. As a war correspondent he is unrivalled."
—Financial Times

Backstabbing for Beginners

My Crash Course in International Diplomacy

By Michael Soussan

The Wall Street Journal listed Backstabbing for Beginners as one of the 12 best books of 2008.

The American Dream

Walking in the Shoes of Carnies, Arms Dealers, Immigrant Dreamers, Pot Farmers, and Christian Believers

By Harmon Leon

For more information, visit Harmon Leon's blog.

Meltdown

How Greed and Corruption Shattered our Financial System and How We Can Recover

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

The Man Who Sold the World

Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America

By William Kleinknecht

"'The Man Who Sold the World' is the most concise and well-thought-out argument against Reagan."
Read the entire Truthdig review

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.

Gangs in Garden City

How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence are Changing America’s Suburbs

By Sarah Garland

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

The Death and Life of American Journalism

The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again

By Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols

Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is in meltdown. In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert W. McChesney, an academic, and John Nichols, a journalist, who together founded the nation's leading media reform network, Free Press, investigate the crisis. They propose a bold strategy for saving journalism that looks back to how the Founding Fathers ensured free press protection with the First Amendment and provided subsidies to the burgeoning print press of the young nation.

"John Nichols and Bob McChesney are the Thomas Paine and Paul Revere of our time. We ignore them at democracy's peril." —Bill Moyers

Watch McChesney and Nichols on C-SPAN's Book TV on March 14-15.