'Revisiting this selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books is restorative, an extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.' James Wolcott in his introduction Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books, to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best. Familiar betes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the 'Salman Rushdie Acid Test', on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on America's homegrown Nazis and 'Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square' in 1968. Edited by the London Review of Books, with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, 'a Hitch in time': barnstorming, cauterising, and ultimately uncontainable.

The renowned World Press Photo Foundation ("Connecting the world to the stories that matter") publishes a compilation of prizewinning press photographs each year. Carefully selected from thousands of entries, they present the most celebrated, powerful, moving, and often disturbing images from around the world, often putting a face on conflicts in far-flung places and reminding us of our shared humanity. The 2022 Yearbook, bringing together the best press photographs from 2021, will reflect the joy, anguish, and upheaval of this incredible year.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. In 1936, George Orwell volunteered as a soldier in the Spanish Civil War. In Homage to Catalonia, first published just before the outbreak of World War II, Orwell documents the chaos and bloodshed of that moment in history and the voices of those who fought against rising fascism. His experience of the civil war would spark a significant change in his own political views, which readers today will recognise in much of his later literary work; a rage against the threat of totalitarianism and control.

The work deals with issues of performance, gender ambiguity, and marginality. It is concerned with the boundaries of language and the possibilities of cross-dressing poetry as commercials, diary, tabloids, gossip, confessions, videos, autobiography, musicals, and manifesto. Characters turn into other characters. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, lead soldiers, magicians, madmen, witches, fortune-tellers, and artists perform their fantasies in the city streets. An antinovel within the book satirizes the writer's role in the modern age and calls for a revolution of poetry. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal citizens, as the narrator is led through a seeming phantasmagoria of internal and external trials in order to experience the center - of political power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity.

Fifty more essays from famous writers on their incurable love affair with the Big Apple What do Francine Prose, Suketu Mehta, and Edwidge Danticat have in common? Each suffers from an incurable love affair with the Big Apple, and each contributed to the canon of writing New York has inspired by way of the New York Times City Section, a part of the paper that once defined Sunday afternoon leisure for the denizens of the five boroughs. Former City Section editor Constance Rosenblum has again culled a diverse cast of voices that brought to vivid life our metropolis through those pages in this follow-up to the publication New York Stories (2005). The fifty essays in More New York Stories unite the city's best-known writers to provide a window to the bustle and richness of city life. As with the previous collection, many of the contributors need no introduction, among them Kevin Baker, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Dorothy Gallagher, Colin Harrison, Frances Kiernan, Nathaniel Rich, Jonathan Rosen, Christopher Sorrentino, and Robert Sullivan; they are among the most eloquent observers of our urban life. Others are relative newcomers. But all are voices worth listening to, and the result is a comprehensive and entertaining picture of New York in all its many guises. The section on "Characters'' offers a bouquet of indelible profiles. The section on "Places" takes us on journeys to some of the city's quintessential locales. "Rituals, Rhythms, and Ruminations" seeks to capture the city's peculiar texture, and the section called "Excavating the Past" offers slices of the city's endlessly fascinating history. Delightful for dipping into and a great companion for anyone planning a trip, this collection is both a heart-warming introduction to the human side of New York and a reminder to life-long New Yorkers of the reasons we call the city home.

For all those Anthony Bourdain fans who are hungering for more, here is Nasty Bits - a collection of his journalism. As usual Bourdain serves up a well-seasoned hellbroth of candid, often outrageous stories from his worldwide misadventures. Whether scrounging for eel in the backstreets of Hanoi, revealing what you didn't want to know about the more unglamorous aspects of making television, calling for the head of raw food activist Woody Harrelson, or confessing to lobster-killing guilt, Bourdain is as entertaining as ever. The Nasty Bits is a rude, funny, brutal and passionate stew for fans and the uninitiated alike. .

`I must find my own complicated junkie to have violent sex with. In 1994, nothing seemed like a better idea, save being able to write about it later.' Michelle Tea is our exuberant, witty guide to the hard times and wild creativity of queer life in America. Along the way she reclaims SCUM Manifesto author Valerie Solanas as an absurdist, remembers the lives and deaths of the lesbian motorbike gang HAGS, and listens to activists at a trans protest camp. This kaleidoscope of love and adventure also makes room for a defence of pigeons and a tale of teenage goths hustling for tips at an ice creamery in a `grimy, busted city called Chelsea'. Unsparing but unwaveringly kind, Michelle Tea reveals herself and others in unexpected and heartbreaking ways. Against Memoir is the winner of the 2019 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Best known as writer of fiction and memoir, this is the first time Tea's journalism has been collected. Delivered with her signature candour and dark humour, Against Memoir solidifies her place as one of the leading queer writers of our time.

Politics looked straightforward when Patrick Kidd took over the reins of the daily political sketch in The Times in 2015. David Cameron had just won a general election and would clearly be Prime Minister for as long as he wanted; George Osborne was his obvious successor (rather than the editor of a free London evening newspaper); Theresa May was a slightly underwhelming Home Secretary and Jeremy Corbyn an anonymous Labour backbencher best known as a serial rebel against his own party. Then suddenly everything went a bit strange. In this anthology of his best columns from the past four years, Kidd plays the role of parliamentary theatre critic, chronicling the collapse of Cameron, the nebulous clarity of May, the rise and refusal to fall of Corbyn and Boris Johnson's repeated failure to keep his foot out of his mouth. Featuring a menagerie of supporting oddballs, such as Jacob and the Mogglodytes, Failing Grayling, Gavin `Private Pike' Williamson and the simpering lobby fodder that are Toady, Lickspittle and Creep, this is a much-needed antidote to the gloom of the Brexit years.

There is a part of human nature compelled to test our own limits. But what happens when this part comes to define us? When journalist Jenny Valentish wrote Woman of Substances, a book about addiction, she noticed that people who treated drug-taking like an Olympic sport would often hurl themselves into a pursuit like marathon running upon giving up. What stayed constant was the need to push their boundaries. Everything Harder Than Everyone Else follows people doing the things that most couldn't, wouldn't or shouldn't. By delving into their extreme behaviour, there's a lot that us mere mortals can learn about the human condition. There's the neuroscientist violating his brain to override his disgust response. The athlete using childhood adversity as grist for the mill. The wrestler turning restlessness into curated ultraviolence. The architect hanging from hooks in her flesh, to better get out of her head. The performance artist seeking erasure by torturing his body. The BDSM dom helping people flirt with death to feel more alive. The bare-knuckle boxer whose gnarliest opponent is her ego. The dancer who could not separate her identity from her practice until at death's door. The bodybuilder exacting order on a life that was once chaotic. And the porn star-turned-fighter for whom sex and violence are two sides of the same coin. Their insights lead Jenny on a compulsive, sometimes reckless journey of immersion journalism. -- .

Smiling Slovenia's collection of articles and essays on Slovenia's current political scene boldly declares its dissenting view from the political mainstream beginning with a declaration of a dozen prominent intellectuals presenting their views of Slovenia's political situation. Topics range from recent Slovenian history, Slovenia's role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, foreign policies, including liaisons with the Islamic terrorists to modern-day Slovenian-American relations and Slovenia's admission into the European Union. This book shows that Slovenia, although outwardly westernized, is still deeply rooted in its communistic legacy. However, prominent intellectuals and democratic politicians strive to hold Slovenia to the highest European cultural, ethical, political, legal, and economical standards in public life - a goal that may take several generations to achieve. Some authors observe that transparency achieved by the present conservative coalition government has already established a state of affairs where return to the old ways of a crypto government would be impossible even if the leftist parties returned to power.

This book offers a revealing look at how newspapers covered the key events of the Plains Indian Wars between 1862-1891-reporting that offers some surprising viewpoints as well as biases and misrepresentations. The Frontier Newspapers and the Coverage of the Plains Indian Wars takes readers back to the late 19th century to show how newspaper reporting impacted attitudes toward the conflict between the United States and Native Americans. Emphasizing primary sources and eyewitness accounts, the book focuses on eight watershed events between 1862 and 1891-the Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Flight of the Nez Perce, the Cheyenne Outbreak, the Trial of Standing Bear, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and its aftermath. Each chapter examines an individual event, analyzing the balance and accuracy of the newspaper coverage and how the reporting of the time reinforced stereotypes about Native Americans. Includes historical photos of prominent Native Americans and a scene of the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre Presents an extensive bibliography of books, articles, and a list of frontier newspapers that served as primary source material

Drawing on the history of English feminism and the study of Victorian periodical and newspaper presses, this important and timely new book asks a key question that neither history nor literary studies has yet addressed: what did it mean to have a Victorian feminist write for an established newspaper or periodical? Using the example of Frances Power Cobbe (one of a handful of women to make a steady living for the mid-nineteenth century established press), Susan Hamilton opens up our understanding of Victorian feminism and its political workings, and urges us to reconsider what feminism looked like in the nineteenth-century.

Victorian culture was dominated by an ever expanding world of print. A tremendous increase in the volume of books, newspapers, and periodicals, was matched by the corresponding development of the first mass reading public. It has long been acknowledged that the growth of the popular publishing industry played an instrumental role in the success of most major Victorian novelists. Traditional critical positions have, nevertheless, recently expanded into a much broader field concerned with media history, book studies, modes of textual production and consumption, and concepts of "popular literature." One of most notable current critical trends is a renewed interest in the importance of all aspects of nineteenth-century print culture.
Victorian Print Media: A Reader collects primary sources from nineteenth century journals, newspapers, and periodicals into an anthology that can be used for teaching purposes, but is also intended to complement and encourage ongoing research. The extracts are organized into ten thematically arranged sections. Each section addresses a specific conceptual or historical issue, such as the impact of serial publication upon practices of reading and authorship. The sections demonstrate the multiple factors upon which the aesthetics of print media depended, making this anthology of use to all researchers, teachers, and students of the period.

James Boswell (1740-1795), best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was also a lawyer, journalist, diarist, and an insightful chronicler of a pivotal epoch in Western history. This fascinating collection, edited by Paul Tankard, presents a generous and varied selection of Boswell's journalistic writings, most of which have not been published since the eighteenth century. It offers a new angle on the history of journalism, an idiosyncratic view of literature, politics, and public life in late eighteenth-century Britain, and an original perspective on a complex and engaging literary personality.

"Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard." -Claudia Tate, from the introduction Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century. Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after. Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art. Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.

In this groundbreaking battery of dispatches from the heartland of America, Matt Taibbi tells the full story of the Trump phenomenon, from its tragi-comic beginnings to the apocalyptic election.

Full of sharp, on-the-ground reporting and gallows humour, his incisive analysis goes beyond the bizarre and disturbing election to tell a wider story of the apparent collapse of American democracy. Taibbi saw the essential themes right from the start: the power of spectacle over truth; the end of a shared reality on the left and right; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism.

From the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the aimless Hillary Clinton campaign, across the flailing media coverage and the trampled legacy of Obama, this is the story of ordinary voters forced to bear witness to the whole charade. At the centre of it all, "a bumbling train wreck of a candidate who belched and preened his way past a historically weak field" who, improbably, has taken control of the world's most powerful nation.

This is essential and hilarious reading that explores how the new America understands itself, and about the future of the world just beyond the horizon.

Many of the photographs are as familiar as they are iconic: Nelson Mandela gazing through the bars of his prison cell on Robben Island; a young Miriam Makeba smiling and dancing; Hugh Masekela as a schoolboy receiving the gift of a trumpet from Louis Armstrong; Henry ‘Mr Drum’ Nxumalo; the Women’s March of 1955; the Sophiatown removals; the funeral of the Sharpeville massacre victims …

Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg was the man behind the camera, recording history as it unfolded in apartheid South Africa, but his personal story is no less extraordinary. His affiliation for the displaced, the persecuted and the marginalised was already deeply rooted by the time he came to South Africa from Germany in 1950 and began taking pictures for the fledgling Drum magazine. In this powerfully evocative memoir of an international, award-winning career spanning over 50 years – in Europe, Africa and the US – this behind-the-scenes journey with a legendary photojournalist and visual storyteller is a rare and special privilege.

Schadeberg’s first-hand experiences as a child in Berlin during the Second World War, where he witnessed the devastating effect of the repressive Nazi regime, and felt the full wrath of the Allied Forces’ relentless bombing of the city, are vividly told. The only child of an actress, who left her son largely to his own devices, Jürgen became skilled at living by his wits, and developed a resourcefulness that held him in good stead throughout his life. At the end of the war, his mother married a British officer and emigrated to South Africa, leaving Jürgen behind in a devastated Germany to fend for himself. With some luck and a great deal of perseverance, he was able to pursue his interest in photography in Hamburg, undergoing training as an unpaid ‘photographic volunteer’ at the German Press Agency, then graduating to taking photos at football matches.

After two years there, Jürgen made the decision to travel to South Africa. He arrived at Johannesburg station on a cold winter’s morning. He had a piece of paper with his mother’s address on it, his worldly possessions in a small, cheap suitcase on the platform beside him, and his Leica camera, as always, around his neck.

The Pyramid of Lies by international financial journalist Duncan Mavin, is the true story of Lex Greensill, the Australian farmer who became a hi-flying billionaire banker before crashing back down to earth, exposing a tangled network of flawed financiers, politicians and industrialists. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk. What Bad Blood did for Silicon Valley and The Smartest Guys in the Room did for Wall Street, The Pyramid of Lies will do for the world of shadow banking and supply chain finance. It is a world populated with some of the most outlandish characters in business and some of the most outrageous examples of excess. It is a story of greed and ambition that shines a light on the murky intersection between politics and business, where lavish fortunes can be made and lost.

There are law books about constructive trusts, the Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 1964, and the rule in Foss v Harbottle. This law book is not one of them. Writer David Pannick has always been much more interested in unpersuasive advocates and injudicious judges. In this entertaining and sometimes shocking collection of his fortnightly columns from The Times (London), Pannick passes judgement on advocates who tell judges that their closing submissions to the jury will not take long because "I would like to move my car before 5 o'clock." Pannick also sentences judges who claim to have invisible dwarf friends sitting with them on the Bench, who order the parties to "stay loose - as a goose," and who signal their rejection of an advocate's argument by flushing a miniature toilet on the bench. Pannick will entertain and inform the reader about judges, lawyers, legal culture, and law reform. I Have to Move My Car is an ideal gift for all those who appreciate the lighter side to court life.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that... As a young man struggling to find his voice as a writer, George Orwell left the comfort of home to live in the impoverished working districts of Paris and London. He would document both the chaos and boredom of destitution, the eccentric cast of characters he encountered, and the near-constant pains of hunger and discomfort. Exposing the grim reality of a life marred by poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London, part memoir, part social commentary, would become George Orwell's first published work.