Books on Journalism

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

(paperback edition)

By Jeremy Scahill

Meet Blackwater USA, the powerful private army that the U.S. government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. With its own military base, a fleet of 20 aircraft, and 20,000 troops at the ready, Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror."

Jeremy Scahill has won the prestigious 2007 George Polk Book Award for this bestselling exposé. On September 21, Scahill testified before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on the use of private contractors in Iraq. Read the transcript here.

Collateral Damage

America's War Against Iraqi Civilians

By Laila Al-Arian and Chris Hedges

I See Black People

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

By Kristal Brent Zook

Kill the Messenger

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

By Nick Schou

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.

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