Download or read book Dispatches from the War Zone written by Mike Rhodes and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposing the social and political landscape of homelessness in Fresno, Dispatches from the War Zone offers the reader a rare opportunity to understand this issue from the perspective of the homeless, their allies and an investigative journalist who closely followed this story for more than 10 years. What at first appeared to be builders and developers working with Fresno City Hall and the police to move the homeless to more remote areas of town turns into something else entirely. We find government corruption, a class action lawsuit against the city for its unconstitutional attacks against the homeless and the suspicious death of Pamela Kincaid, the lead plaintiff in the legal action. Originally, it was the federal government's de-funding of affordable housing in the early 1980s that led to today's homeless crisis. The book examines those structural reasons for homelessness but also looks at what grassroots groups in Fresno, working on alternatives, have accomplished. Although the end to homelessness has been elusive for those groups doing business as usual, the paradigm shifts this book suggests give new hope that a better world is possible. There is a pathway to ending homelessness and treating all people with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Download or read book Dispatches written by Michael Herr and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.
Download or read book Drug War Zone written by Howard Campbell and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ground-level chronicle of the violent drug war in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico—with accounts from both traffickers and law enforcement, and “astute analysis” (The Americas). Thousands die in drug-related violence every year in Mexico. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, adjacent to El Paso, Texas, has become the most violent city in the drug war. Much of the cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine consumed in the United States is imported across the Mexican border, making El Paso/Juárez one of the major drug-trafficking venues in the world. In this anthropological study of drug trafficking and anti-drug law enforcement efforts on the US–Mexico border, Howard Campbell uses an ethnographic perspective to chronicle the recent Mexican drug war, focusing especially on people and events in the El Paso/Juárez area. It is the first social science study of the violent drug war that is tearing Mexico apart. Based on deep access to the drug-smuggling world, this study presents the drug war through the words of direct participants. Half of the book consists of oral histories from drug traffickers, and the other half from law enforcement officials. There is much journalistic coverage of the drug war, but very seldom are the lived experiences of traffickers and “narcs” presented in such vivid detail. In addition to providing an up-close, personal view of this world, Campbell explains and analyzes the functioning of cartels, the corruption that facilitates trafficking, the strategies of smugglers and anti-narcotics officials, and the perilous culture of drug trafficking that Campbell refers to as the “Drug War Zone.” “This collection of oral histories of drug traffickers and counter-drug officials examines the border narco-world through the eyes of first-hand participants . . . An invaluable resource for anyone seeking a greater sociological understanding.” —Journal of Latin American Studies
Download or read book Steinbeck in Vietnam written by John Steinbeck and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although his career continued for almost three decades after the 1939 publication of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck is still most closely associated with his Depression-era works of social struggle. But from Pearl Harbor on, he often wrote passionate accounts of America’s wars based on his own firsthand experience. Vietnam was no exception. Thomas E. Barden’s Steinbeck in Vietnam offers for the first time a complete collection of the dispatches Steinbeck wrote as a war correspondent for Newsday. Rejected by the military because of his reputation as a subversive, and reticent to document the war officially for the Johnson administration, Steinbeck saw in Newsday a unique opportunity to put his skills to use. Between December 1966 and May 1967, the sixty-four-year-old Steinbeck toured the major combat areas of South Vietnam and traveled to the north of Thailand and into Laos, documenting his experiences in a series of columns titled Letters to Alicia, in reference to Newsday publisher Harry F. Guggenheim’s deceased wife. His columns were controversial, coming at a time when opposition to the conflict was growing and even ardent supporters were beginning to question its course. As he dared to go into the field, rode in helicopter gunships, and even fired artillery pieces, many detractors called him a warmonger and worse. Readers today might be surprised that the celebrated author would risk his literary reputation to document such a divisive war, particularly at the end of his career. Drawing on four primary-source archives—the Steinbeck collection at Princeton, the Papers of Harry F. Guggenheim at the Library of Congress, the Pierpont Morgan Library’s Steinbeck holdings, and the archives of Newsday—Barden’s collection brings together the last published writings of this American author of enduring national and international stature. In addition to offering a definitive edition of these essays, Barden includes extensive notes as well as an introduction that provides background on the essays themselves, the military situation, the social context of the 1960s, and Steinbeck’s personal and political attitudes at the time.
Download or read book Ernie s War written by Ernie Pyle and published by Touchstone. This book was released on 1987 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all readers, especially those whose only of World War II may be from textbooks or films, Ernie's War offers a revealing, poignant look at the actual experiences of the average foot soldier swept into the tumult of battle. 9 black-and-white photographs.
Download or read book Beyond the Green Zone written by Dahr Jamail and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The critically acclaimed account of life in Iraq under US occupation with a new afterword.
Download or read book In Extremis written by Lindsey Hilsum and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Finalist for the Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Named a Best Book of 2018 by Esquire and Foreign Policy. An Amazon Best Book of November, the Guardian Bookshop Book of November, and one of the Evening Standard's Books to Read in November "Now, thanks to Hilsum’s deeply reported and passionately written book, [Marie Colvin] has the full accounting that she deserves." --Joshua Hammer, The New York Times The inspiring and devastating biography of Marie Colvin, the foremost war reporter of her generation, who was killed in Syria in 2012, and whose life story also forms the basis of the feature film A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin. When Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost a fearless and iconoclastic war correspondent who covered the most significant global calamities of her lifetime. In Extremis, written by her fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling investigation into Colvin’s epic life and tragic death based on exclusive access to her intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death, interviews with people from every corner of her life, and impeccable research. After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin studied with the legendary journalist John Hersey at Yale, and eventually started working for The Sunday Times of London, where she gained a reputation for bravery and compassion as she told the stories of victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost sight in one eye while in Sri Lanka covering the civil war, interviewed Gaddafi and Arafat many times, and repeatedly risked her life covering conflicts in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, and the Middle East. Colvin lived her personal life in extremis, too: bold, driven, and complex, she was married twice, took many lovers, drank and smoked, and rejected society’s expectations for women. Despite PTSD, she refused to give up reporting. Like her hero Martha Gellhorn, Colvin was committed to bearing witness to the horrifying truths of war, and to shining a light on the profound suffering of ordinary people caught in the midst of conflict. Lindsey Hilsum’s In Extremis is a devastating and revelatory biography of one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation.
Download or read book The Morning They Came For Us Dispatches from Syria written by Janine di Giovanni and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and the New York Post Winner of the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award Winner of the Hay Festival Medal for Prose Finalist for the NYPL Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism Shortlisted for the Moore Prize for Nonfiction "Destined to become a classic." —Lisa Shea, Elle A masterpiece of war reportage, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawing from years of experience covering Syria for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the front page of the New York Times, award-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni chronicles a nation on the brink of disintegration, all written through the perspective of ordinary people. With a new epilogue, what emerges is an unflinching picture of the horrific consequences of armed conflict, one that charts an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war zone. The result is an unforgettable testament to resilience in the face of nihilistic human debasement.
Download or read book War Is Not Just for Heroes written by Linda M. Canup Keaton-Lima and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2024-03-07 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Firsthand accounts of war in the Pacific theater from a premier chronicler of the real world of World War II combat. War Is Not Just for Heroes rescues the incredible true stories of US Marine Corps. Written by one marine, Claude R. "Red" Canup, a combat correspondent in the Pacific during World War II, these dispatches and private letters provide insight into the grind of war and ordinary men and women who carried out their duty. Thoughtfully edited and contextualized by a preface and prologue by his daughter, War Is Not Just for Heroes combines documentary and biography to provide the human dimensions of those in combat and those who reported out.
Download or read book A Small Corner of Hell written by Anna Politkovskaya and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chechnya, a 6,000-square-mile corner of the northern Caucasus, has struggled under Russian domination for centuries. The region declared its independence in 1991, leading to a brutal war, Russian withdrawal, and subsequent "governance" by bandits and warlords. A series of apartment building attacks in Moscow in 1999, allegedly orchestrated by a rebel faction, reignited the war, which continues to rage today. Russia has gone to great lengths to keep journalists from reporting on the conflict; consequently, few people outside the region understand its scale and the atrocities—described by eyewitnesses as comparable to those discovered in Bosnia—committed there. Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the liberal Moscow newspaper Novaya gazeta, was the only journalist to have constant access to the region. Her international stature and reputation for honesty among the Chechens allowed her to continue to report to the world the brutal tactics of Russia's leaders used to quell the uprisings. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya is her second book on this bloody and prolonged war. More than a collection of articles and columns, A Small Corner of Hell offers a rare insider's view of life in Chechnya over the past years. Centered on stories of those caught-literally-in the crossfire of the conflict, her book recounts the horrors of living in the midst of the war, examines how the war has affected Russian society, and takes a hard look at how people on both sides are profiting from it, from the guards who accept bribes from Chechens out after curfew to the United Nations. Politkovskaya's unflinching honesty and her courage in speaking truth to power combine here to produce a powerful account of what is acknowledged as one of the most dangerous and least understood conflicts on the planet. Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated in Moscow on October 7, 2006. "The murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya leaves a terrible silence in Russia and an information void about a dark realm that we need to know more about. No one else reported as she did on the Russian north Caucasus and the abuse of human rights there. Her reports made for difficult reading—and Politkovskaya only got where she did by being one of life's difficult people."—Thomas de Waal, Guardian
Download or read book Dispatches from the Edge written by Anderson Cooper and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America’s leading reporters shares a deeply personal, extraordinarily powerful look at the most volatile crises he has witnessed around the world. A #1 New York Times Bestseller Anderson Cooper’s groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life—from the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq, from the starvation in Niger to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi. Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable story from one of America’s most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters. Praise for Dispatches from the Edge “A smart, soulful page-turner. . . . Cooper is a storyteller with plenty of heart.” —People “From the shores of Sri Lanka to the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, Cooper weaves his experiences at CNN into a moving memoir.” —Newsweek “His vignettes from the world’s horrscapes rise above the swagger of many journalistic memoirs because Cooper writes with competence as well as feeling.” —Washington Post Book World “Anderson Cooper gets New Orleans. . . . This is an emotional, personal reckoning with what he’s seen.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune
Download or read book Deros Vietnam written by Doug Bradley and published by . This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DEROS Vietnam presents a unique, fictional montage of the war, and postwar, experiences of Vietnam support troops. DEROS Vietnam is a riveting collection of 16 short stories and 16 interlinears about the GIs who battled boredom, racial tensions, the military brass, drugs, alcohol--and occasionally the enemy.
Download or read book To Die in Mexico written by John Gibler and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexico is in a state of siege. Since President Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs in December 2006, more than 38,000 Mexican have been murdered. During the same period, drug money has infused over $130 billion into Mexico's economy, now the country's single largest source of income. Corruption and graft infiltrate all levels of government. Entire towns have become ungovernable, and of every 100 people killed, Mexican police now only investigate approximately five. But the market is booming: In 2009, more people in the United States bought recreational drugs than ever before. In 2009, the United Nations reported that some $350 billion in drug money had been successfully laundered into the global banking system the prior year, saving it from collapse. How does an "extra" $350 billion in the global economy affect the murder rate in Mexico? To get the story and connect the dogs, acclaimed journalist John Gibler travels across Mexico and slips behind the frontlines to talk with people who live in towns under assault: newspaper reporters and crime-beat photographers, funeral parlor workers, convicted drug traffickers, government officials, cab drivers and others who find themselves living on the lawless frontiers of the drug war. Gibler tells hair-raising stories of wild street battles, kidnappings, narrow escapes, politicians on the take, and the ordinary people who fight for justice as they seek solutions to the crisis that is tearing Mexico apart. Fast-paced and urgent, To Die in Mexico is an extraordinary look inside the raging drug war, and its global implications. John Gibler is a writer based in Mexico and California, the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt (City Lights Books, 2009) and a contributor to País de muertos: Crónicas contra la impunidad (Random House Mondadori, 2011). He is a correspondent for KPFA in San Francisco and has published in magazines in the United States and Mexico, including Left Turn, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, ColorLines, Race, Poverty, the Environment Fifth Estate, New Politics, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, Contralínea and Milenio Semanal. "Gibler's front-line reportage coupled with first-rate analysis gives an uncommonly vivid and nuanced picture of a society riddled and enervated by corruption, shootouts, and raids, where murder is the 'most popular method of conflict resolution.' . . . At great personal risk, the author unearths stories the mainstream media doesn't—or is it too afraid—to cover, and gives voice to those who have been silenced or whose stories have been forgotten."—Publishers Weekly, starred review "Gibler argues passionately to undercut this 'case study in failure.' The drug barons are only getting richer, the murders mount and the police and military repression expand as 'illegality increases the value of the commodity.' With legality, both U.S. and Mexican society could address real issues of substance abuse through education and public-health initiatives. A visceral, immediate and reasonable argument."—Kirkus Reviews "Gibler provides a fascinating and detailed insight into the history of both drug use in the US and the 'war on drugs' unleashed by Ronald Reagan through the very plausible—but radical—lens of social control. . . . Throughout this short but powerful book, Gibler accompanies journalists riding the grim carousel of death on Mexico's streets, exploring the realities of a profession under siege in states such as Sinaloa and just how they cover the drugs war."—Gavin O’Toole, The Latin American Review of Books
Download or read book Dispatches from the Front written by David Halton and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As senior war correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the Second World War, Matthew Halton reported from the front lines in Italy and Northwest Europe and became “the voice of Canada at war.” His gripping, passionate broadcasts chronicled the victories and losses of Canadian soldiers and made him a national hero. Born in Pincher Creek, Alberta, in 1904, Halton was to achieve the fastest ever ascent in Canadian journalism. A year after joining the Toronto Daily Star as a cub reporter, he was in Berlin to write about Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power and – long before most other correspondents – to begin a prophetic series of warnings about the Nazi regime. For more than two decades, he witnessed first-hand the major political and military events of the era. He covered Europe’s drift to disaster, including the breakdown of the League of Nations, the Spanish Civil War, the sellout to Fascism at Munich, and the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia. Along the way he interviewed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hermann Göring, Neville Chamberlain, Charles de Gaulle, Mahatma Gandhi, and dozens of others who shaped the history of the century. In Dispatches from the Front, acclaimed former CBC correspondent David Halton, Matthew’s son, also examines his father’s often tumultuous personal life. He unravels the many paradoxes of his personality: the war correspondent who loathed bloodshed yet became addicted to the thrill of battle; the loner who thrived in good company; and, in some ways most puzzling of all, the womanizer with a deep and enduring love for his wife. Drawn from extensive interviews and archival research, this definitive biography is a captivating portrait of the life of one of Canada’s most accomplished journalists.
Download or read book Death Zones and Darling Spies written by Beverly Deepe Keever and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chosen for 2015 One Book One Nebraska In 1961, equipped with a master's degree from famed Columbia Journalism School and letters of introduction to Associated Press bureau chiefs in Asia, twenty-six-year-old Beverly Deepe set off on a trip around the world. Allotting just two weeks to South Vietnam, she was still there seven years later, having then earned the distinction of being the longest-serving American correspondent covering the Vietnam War and garnering a Pulitzer Prize nomination. In Death Zones and Darling Spies, Beverly Deepe Keever describes what it was like for a farm girl from Nebraska to find herself halfway around the world, trying to make sense of one of the nation's bloodiest and bitterest wars. She arrived in Saigon as Vietnam's war entered a new phase and American helicopter units and provincial advisers were unpacking. She tells of traveling from her Saigon apartment to jungles where Wild West-styled forts first dotted Vietnam's borders and where, seven years later, they fell like dominoes from communist-led attacks. In 1965 she braved elephant grass with American combat units armed with unparalleled technology to observe their valor--and their inability to distinguish friendly farmers from hide-and-seek guerrillas. Keever's trove of tissue-thin memos to editors, along with published and unpublished dispatches for New York and London media, provide the reader with you-are-there descriptions of Buddhist demonstrations and turning-point coups as well as phony ones. Two Vietnamese interpreters, self-described as "darling spies," helped her decode Vietnam's shadow world and subterranean war. These memoirs, at once personal and panoramic, chronicle the horrors of war and a rise and decline of American power and prestige.
Download or read book A Writer At War written by Vasily Grossman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1941, as the Germans invade Russia, newspaper reporter Vasily Grossman is swept to the frontlines, witnessing some of the most savage atrocities in Russian history. As Grossman follows the Red Army from the defence of Moscow, to the carnage at Stalingrad, to the Nazi genocide in Treblinka, his writings paint a vividly raw and devastating account of Operation Barbarossa during World War Two. Grossman’s notebooks, war diaries, personal correspondence and newspaper articles are meticulously woven into a gripping narrative and provide a piercing look into the life of the author behind recent Sunday Times bestseller Stalingrad. A Writer at War stands as an unforgettable eyewitness account of the Eastern Front and places Grossman as the leading Soviet voice of ‘the ruthless truth of war’. ‘A remarkable addition to the literature of 1941 – 1945...a wonderful portrait of the wartime experience of Russia... A worthy memorial to a remarkable man’ Sunday Telegraph
Download or read book Shell Shocked written by Mohammed Omer and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operation Protective Edge, launched in early July 2014, was the third major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in six years. It was also the most deadly. By the conclusion of hostilities some seven weeks later, 2,200 of Gaza’s population had been killed, and more than 10,000 injured. In these pages, journalist Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza who lived through the terror of those days with his wife and then three-month-old son, provides a first-hand account of life on-the-ground during Israel’s assault. The images he records in this extraordinary chronicle are a literary equivalent of Goya’s “Disasters of War”: children’s corpses stuffed into vegetable refrigerators, pointlessly because the electricity is off; a family rushing out of their home after a phone call from the Israeli military informs them that the building will be obliterated by an F-16 missile in three minutes; donkeys machine-gunned by Israeli soldiers under instructions to shoot anything that moves; graveyards targeted with shells so that mourners can no longer tell where their relatives are buried; fishing boats ablaze in the harbor. Throughout this carnage, Omer maintains the cool detachment of the professional journalist, determined to create a precise record of what is occurring in front of him. But between his lines the outrage boils, and we are left to wonder how a society such as Israel, widely-praised in the West as democratic and civilized, can visit such monstrosities on a trapped and helpless population.
