Fully updated from the original edition. As the retreat from Kabul shows, America goes to war not to bring democracy, or glory, but in the pursuit of profit. In The Spoils of War, leading Washington reporter, Andrew Cockburn, reveals the extent of the rot that stretches from the Pentagon and the White House, to Wall St and Silicon Valley. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the "private passions" and "interests" of those who control it - principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as he witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer's urgent financial requirements; the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 "because it will do us good at budget time." Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: squalid, and at the same time terrifyingly dangerous.

For nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in "Inside Higher Ed," "McSweeney's Internet Tendency," "Brevity," "Ninth Letter," and "Adjunct Advocate," many under the pen name Oronte Churm. Churm's topics have ranged widely, exploring themes such as the writing life and the utility of creative-writing classes, race issues in a university town, and the beautiful, protective crocodiles that lie patiently waiting in the minds of fathers.

Though Griswold recently entered the tenure stream, much of his experience, at a Big Ten university, has been as an adjunct lecturer--that tenuous and uncertain position so many now occupy in higher education. In "Pirates You Don't Know," Griswold writes poignantly and hilariously about the contingent nature of this life, tying it to his birth in the last American enclave in Saigon during the Vietnam War, his upbringing in a coal town in southern Illinois, and his experience as an army deep-sea diver and frogman. He investigates class in America through four generations of his family and portrays the continuing joys and challenges of fatherhood while making a living, becoming literate, and staying open to the world. But Griswold's central concerns apply to everyone: What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to think, feel, create, and be whole? What is the point of this particular journey?

"Pirates You Don't Know" is Griswold's vital attempt at making sense of his life as a writer and now professor. The answers for him are both comic and profound: "Picture Long John Silver at the end of the movie, his dory filled with stolen gold, rowing and sinking; rowing, sinking, and gloating."

Sir Philip Gibbs was one of the most widely read English journalists of the first half of the twentieth century. This coverage of his writing offers a broad insight into British social and political developments, government and press relations, propaganda, and war reporting during the First World War.

Since the beginning of human history, stories have helped people make sense of their lives and their world. Today, an understanding of storytelling is invaluable as we seek to orient ourselves within a flood of raw information and an unprecedented variety of supposedly true accounts. In Stories Make the World, award-winning screenwriter Stephen Most offers a captivating, refreshingly heartfelt exploration of how documentary filmmakers and other storytellers come to understand their subjects and cast light on the world through their art. Drawing on the author's decades of experience behind the scenes of television and film documentaries, this is an indispensable account of the principles and paradoxes that attend the quest to represent reality truthfully.

Since the beginning of human history, stories have helped people make sense of their lives and their world. Today, an understanding of storytelling is invaluable as we seek to orient ourselves within a flood of raw information and an unprecedented variety of supposedly true accounts. In Stories Make the World, award-winning screenwriter Stephen Most offers a captivating, refreshingly heartfelt exploration of how documentary filmmakers and other storytellers come to understand their subjects and cast light on the world through their art. Drawing on the author's decades of experience behind the scenes of television and film documentaries, this is an indispensable account of the principles and paradoxes that attend the quest to represent reality truthfully.

In 1945, Indonesia's declaration of independence promised: 'the details of the transfer of power etc. will be worked out as soon as possible.' Still working on the 'etc.' seven decades later, the world's fourth most populous nation is now enthusiastically democratic and riotously diverse - rich and enchanting but riddled with ineptitude and corruption. Elizabeth Pisani, who first worked in Indonesia 25 years ago as a foreign correspondent, set out in 2011, travelling over 13,000 miles, to rediscover its enduring attraction, and to find the links which bind together this disparate nation. Fearless and funny, and sharply perceptive, she has drawn a compelling, entertaining and deeply informed portrait of a captivating nation.

New Zealand has a long and rich tradition of journalism that holds power to account, and that goes beyond allegation and denial to reveal hidden truths. That journalism also bears witness and investigates ideas, exposes systemic problems and insists on government action, and goes beyond allegation and denial to get to the truth of issues. This compelling anthology of pieces, dating from the war in the Waikato to recent investigations, features the work of some of this country's finest investigative journalists, from Robyn Hyde and Pat Booth to Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle, Mike White, Jon Stephenson, Nicky Hager and Phil Kitchin.

This book centers on the role of media in shaping public perceptions of breastfeeding. Drawing from magazines, doctors' office materials, parenting books, television, websites, and other media outlets, Katherine A. Foss explores how historical and contemporary media often undermine breastfeeding efforts with formula marketing and narrow portrayals of nursing women and their experiences. Foss argues that the media's messages play an integral role in setting the standard of public knowledge and attitudes toward breastfeeding, as she traces shifting public perceptions of breastfeeding and their corresponding media constructions from the development of commercial formula through contemporary times. This analysis demonstrates how attributions of blame have negatively impacted public health approaches to breastfeeding, thus confronting the misperception that breastfeeding, and the failure to breastfeed, rests solely on the responsibility of an individual mother.

He wrote on politics and racism before the word ‘apartheid’ ever made headlines. He has questioned southern African leaders from Drs. Malan and Verwoerd to Vorster, PW Botha, FW de Klerk to the first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kuanda, and President Mugabe; including global leaders such as President Mandela, General Smuts, President Gerald Ford and Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Why The Other Side? In part one of Tyson’s remarkable autobiography he encourages views that are different to the fixed positions which most people hold on both sides of the political divide. He writes lightly about his most dangerous moments, and sympathetically about those who struggle to help others. He invites you to look at the situation from ‘the other side’ – wherever confrontation arises.

While Western media are shrinking their foreign correspondent networks, Chinese media, for the first time in history, are rapidly expanding worldwide. The Chinese government is financing most of this growth, hoping to strengthen its influence and improve its public image. But do these reporters willingly serve formulated agendas or do they follow their own interests? And are they changing Chinese citizens' views of the world? Based on interviews and informal conversations with over seventy current and former correspondents, Reporting for China documents a diverse group of professionals who hold political views from nationalist to liberal, but are constrained in their ability to report on the world by China's media control, audience tastes, and the declining market for traditional media.

From an award-winning black journalist, a tough-minded look at the treatment of ethnic minorities both in newsrooms and in the reporting that comes out of them, within the changing media landscape.
From the Rodney King riots to the racial inequities of the new digital media, Amy Alexander has chronicled the biggest race and class stories of the modern era in American journalism. Beginning in the bare-knuckled newsrooms of 1980s San Francisco, her career spans a period of industry-wide economic collapse and tremendous national demographic changes.
Despite reporting in some of the country's most diverse cities, including San Francisco, Boston, and Miami, Alexander consistently encountered a stubbornly white, male press corps and a surprising lack of news concerning the ethnic communities in these multicultural metropolises. Driven to shed light on the race and class struggles taking place in the United States, Alexander embarked on a rollercoaster career marked by cultural conflicts within newsrooms. Along the way, her identity as a black woman journalist changed dramatically, an evolution that coincided with sweeping changes in the media industry and the advent of the Internet.
Armed with census data and news-industry demographic research, Alexander explains how the so-called New Media is reenacting Old Media's biases. She argues that the idea of newsroom diversity--at best an afterthought in good economic times--has all but fallen off the table as the industry fights for its economic life, a dynamic that will ultimately speed the demise of venerable news outlets. Moreover, for the shrinking number of journalists of color who currently work at big news organizations, the lingering ethos of having to be "twice as good" as their white counterparts continues; it is a reality that threatens to stifle another generation of practitioners from "non-traditional" backgrounds.
In this hard-hitting account, Alexander evaluates her own career in the context of the continually evolving story of America's growing ethnic populations and the homogenous newsrooms producing our nation's too often monochromatic coverage. This veteran journalist examines the major news stories that were entrenched in the great race debate of the past three decades, stories like those of Elian Gonzalez, Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, Tavis Smiley, the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and the election of Barack Obama.
"Uncovering Race" offers sharp analysis of how race, gender, and class come to bear on newsrooms, and takes aim at mainstream media's failure to successfully cover a browner, younger nation--a failure that Alexander argues is speeding news organizations' demise faster than the Internet.

"From the Hardcover edition."

A close-up portrait of children caught up in the Syria conflict. It brings together poems, pictures (previously displayed at the 'From Syria With Love' exhibition) and stories from young people living in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon, alongside short story narratives and poetry by those who have worked with the children or been inspired by their stories. The combination is both accessible and immediate, deeply moving and - because of the resilience and optimism of the children themselves - ultimately inspiring. It offers a unique insight into the daily lives of children living through extraordinary events, and reveals their fears, hopes and dreams for the future. The ideal antidote to those who are left in despair by mainstream coverage of the Syrian conflict, it offers a sense of creativity, hope and peace, and helps to form a bridge between the reader and the refugees themselves. All profits from the book will go towards supporting families in the camp, both with basic necessities and in giving the children featured in the book the chance of a better future.