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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works > From 1900
Winner of the Victor Villasenor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book
Award - English, from the 2022 International Latino Book Awards
What defines the boundary between fact and fabrication, fiction and
nonfiction, literature and journalism? Latin American Documentary
Narratives unpacks the precarious testimonial relationship between
author and subject, where the literary journalist, rather than the
subject being interviewed, can become the hero of a narrative in
its recording and retelling. Latin American Documentary Narratives
covers a variety of nonfiction genres from the 1950s to the 2000s
that address topics such as social protests, dictatorships, natural
disasters, crime and migration in Latin America. This book analyzes
- and includes an appendix of interviews with - authors who have
not previously been critically read together, from the early and
emblematic works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Elena Poniatowska to
more recent authors, like Leila Guerriero and Juan Villoro, who are
currently reshaping media and audiences in Latin America. In a
world overwhelmed by data production and marked by violent acts
against those considered 'others', Liliana Chavez Diaz argues that
storytelling plays an essential role in communication among
individuals, classes and cultures.
Mexico, April 2009. The bodies of pair of undercover military
intelligence agents, disguised as campesinos (farmers), are dumped
by the side of the road. Beside the corpses is a message on a scrap
of paper: "You'll never get El Chapo." Authorities did - but only
after the largest manhunt in history (and the help of Sean Penn).
Now, the world's most wanted drug lord, who in 2015 escaped prison
by riding motorbikes over metal rails through a 1.5km tunnel dug in
the showers and was named the 14th richest man in the world by
Forbes, is awaiting trial in the US, and the subject of a smash
Netflix series. This is the inside story of a man behind it all, a
man who is still hailed as a folk hero despite having bribed or
killed politicians, police and soldiers with impunity, and exported
over 500 tonnes of cocaine to America alone. Through reportage and
interviews with rival narcos, police and DEA sources, The Last
Narco masterfully reveals a brutal war between the cartels,
staggering state corruption, and the struggle to bring one man to
justice.
How do we shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people? Olly Alexander,
Peppermint, Owen Jones, Beth Ditto, Shon Faye and more share their
stories and visions for the future. 'A vital addition to your
bookshelf' Stylist, 5 Books for Summer 'Captivating... A must-read'
Gay Times, Books of the Year In We Can Do Better Than This, 35
voices - actors, musicians, writers, artists and activists - answer
this vital question, at a time when the queer community continues
to suffer discrimination and extreme violence. Through deeply
moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and
visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they present a
powerful manifesto for how - together - we can change lives
everywhere. 'Powerful, inspiring...urgent' Attitude 'Read and be
inspired' Peter Tatchell 'Illuminating' Paul Mendez, author of
Rainbow Milk 'Friendly and fierce' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of
Gay Bar
The first comprehensive collection of the words and works of a
movement-defining artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) burst
onto the art scene in the summer of 1980 as one of approximately
one hundred artists exhibiting at the 1980 Times Square Show in New
York City. By 1982, at the age of twenty-one, Basquiat had solo
exhibitions in galleries in Italy, New York, and Los Angeles.
Basquiat's artistic career followed the rapid trajectory of Wall
Street, which boomed from 1983 to 1987. In the span of just a few
years, this Black boy from Brooklyn had become one of the most
famous American artists of the 1980s. The Jean-Michel Basquiat
Reader is the first comprehensive sourcebook on the artist, closing
gaps that have until now limited the sustained study and definitive
archiving of his work and its impact. Eight years after his first
exhibition, Basquiat was dead, but his popularity has only grown.
Through a combination of interviews with the artist, criticism from
the artist's lifetime and immediately after, previously unpublished
research by the author, and a selection of the most important
critical essays on the artist's work, this collection provides a
full picture of the artist's views on art and culture, his working
process, and the critical significance of his work both then and
now.
A TLS and a Prospect Book of the Year A revelatory, explosive new
analysis of the military today. Over the first two decades of the
twenty-first century, Britain has changed enormously. During this
time, the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and
Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither
war achieved its objectives. This book questions why, and provides
challenging but necessary answers. Composed from assiduous
documentary research, field reportage, and hundreds of interviews
with many soldiers and officers who served, as well as the
politicians who directed them, the allies who accompanied them, and
the family members who loved and - on occasion - lost them, it is a
strikingly rich, nuanced portrait of one of our pivotal national
institutions in a time of great stress. Award-winning journalist
Simon Akam, who spent a year in the army when he was 18, returned a
decade later to see how the institution had changed. His book
examines the relevance of the armed forces today - their social,
economic, political, and cultural role. This is as much a book
about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about
the military.
In Atomic Bill, Vincent Kiernan examines the fraught career of New
York Times science journalist, William L. Laurence and shows his
professional and personal lives to be a cautionary tale of
dangerous proximity to power. Laurence was fascinated with atomic
science and its militarization. When the Manhattan Project drew
near to perfecting the atomic bomb, he was recruited to write much
of the government's press materials that were distributed on the
day that Hiroshima was obliterated. That instantly crowned Laurence
as one of the leading journalistic experts on the atomic bomb. As
the Cold War dawned, some assessed Laurence as a propagandist
defending the militarization of atomic energy. For others, he was a
skilled science communicator who provided the public with a deep
understanding of the atomic bomb. Laurence leveraged his perch at
the Times to engage in paid speechmaking, book writing, filmmaking,
and radio broadcasting. His work for the Times declined in quality
even as his relationships with people in power grew closer and more
lucrative. Atomic Bill reveals extraordinary ethical lapses by
Laurence such as a cheating scandal at Harvard University and
plagiarizing from press releases about atomic bomb tests in the
Pacific. In 1963 a conflict of interest related to the 1964 World's
Fair in New York City led to his forced retirement from the Times.
Kiernan shows Laurence to have set the trend, common among today's
journalists of science and technology, to prioritize gee-whiz
coverage of discoveries. That approach, in which Laurence served
the interests of governmental official and scientists, recommends a
full revision of our understanding of the dawn of the atomic era.
In War-Path and Bivouac, published in 1890, John Finerty
(1846-1908) recalled the summer he spent following George Crook's
infamous campaign against the Sioux in 1876. Historians have long
surmised that Finerty's correspondence covering the campaign for
the Chicago Times reappeared in its entirety in Finerty's
celebrated book. But that turns out not to be the case, as readers
will discover in this remarkable volume. In print at last, this
collection of Finerty's letters and telegrams to his hometown
newspaper, written from the field during Crook's campaign, conveys
the full extent of the reporter's experience and observations
during this time of great excitement and upheaval in the West. An
introduction and annotations by Paul L. Hedren, a lifelong
historian of the period, provide ample biographical and historical
background for Finerty's account. Four times under fire, giving as
well as he got, Finerty reported on the action with the immediacy
of an unfolding wartime story. To his riveting dispatches on the
Rosebud and Slim Buttes battles, this collection adds accounts of
the lesser-known Sibley scout and the tortures of the campaign
trail, penned by a keen-eyed newsman who rode at the front through
virtually all of the action. Here, too, is an intimate look at the
Black Hills gold rush and at principal towns like Deadwood and
Custer City, captured in the earliest moments of their colorful
history. Hedren's introduction places Finerty not only on the scene
in Wyoming, Montana, and Dakota during the Indian campaign, but
also in the context of battlefield journalism at a critical time in
its evolution. Publication of this volume confirms John Finerty's
outsize role in that historical moment.
The sudden shift to remote education in response to the COVID-19
pandemic created both a unique challenge and a unique opportunity.
Students and instructors alike were required to quickly adapt to
the digital classroom, adjusting methods, material, and pedagogical
approaches on the fly.Bringing together twenty-five interviews from
the frontline of emergency remote education, Voices from the
Digital Classroom portrays the struggles, innovations, and
resilience of students, instructors, and educational professionals
in the face of COVID-19. These interviews offer a unique,
of-the-moment perspective on an exceptional time. Complemented by
additional voices that expand on stories told to reflect on
challenges, successes, and lessons learned, Voices from the Digital
Classroom is both a time-capsule and a vision for the future. It
provides new insights into pandemic teaching and learning, a
remarkable lens into the daily realities of the digital classroom,
and an inspiration for the future of remote education in a
post-pandemic world.
What happens when a regular person accidentally finds themselves
lost in the middle of a war? In 1991, BBC journalist Chris Woolf
travelled to Afghanistan. The government in Kabul was fighting for
survival, after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. The parallels
to today are extraordinary. Woolf was visiting a colleague to see
if he'd like the life of a foreign correspondent. They hitched a
ride with an aid convoy and bumbled straight into the war. They
kept going, despite the horror and terror. There was no choice.
Amid the darkness, Woolf discovered the generosity and hospitality
of ordinary Afghans. They became the first journalists to pass
through the battle lines to meet with legendary warlord Ahmed Shah
Massoud, and carried home a vital message for the peace process.
They met with Soviet POW/MIAs and recorded messages for loved ones.
Unlike a conventional war story, Woolf shares an intimate portrait
of first encounters with death and real fear. He explores the
lingering effects of trauma, and explains how he put his experience
to good use. The author introduces readers to just enough of
Afghanistan's history, geography, culture and politics for readers
to understand what's going on around him. What people are saying:
"Bumbling Through the Hindu Kush is at once gripping, informative,
suspenseful, and at times it reads like a thriller." - Qais Akbar
Omar, author of "A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story."
"Chris Woolf has written a truly personal tale that is both
gripping and historically significant for the war between the
Soviet-backed government and Mujahidin in Afghanistan. His mix of
personal, cultural, and wartime reflections make this a story well
worth the time of Afghanistan aficionados and casual readers
alike." - Dr Jonathan Schroden, former strategic adviser to the US
military's Central Command, and to the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan "Combat can feel like the
ant on an elephant's tail: overwhelmed and along for the ride.
Chris Woolf's memoir of his ten days in late 1991 "bumbling" into
the war in Afghanistan is just such an up-and-down tale, with the
momentary highs and gut-crushing lows common to combat. When the
teenage goat herder fires his AK-47 in the first few pages - you'll
know how that ant feels, just holding on, exhilarated, terrified,
never really knowing what comes next." - Lt-Col ML Cavanaugh, US
Army; Senior Fellow, Modern War Institute at West Point; lead
writer and co-editor, "Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars
Explains Modern Military Conflict." The perfect Christmas gift for
all those who like military history and think they understand war.
The author believes in giving back, so a portion of the proceeds is
donated towards helping Afghan kids with disabilities
(enabledchildren.org), and towards clearing landmines in
Afghanistan and around the world (HALOTrust.org).
Fear and loathing on the 2020 campaign trail... '26 February, White
House Briefing Room The coronavirus feels like it is changing
everything. Suddenly it's not just a public health emergency; it
has the potential to upend this whole election...' In
UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all
others, BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel presents a diary of an
election like we've never quite seen before. Experience life as a
reporter on the campaign trail, as the election heats up and a
global pandemic slowly sweeps in. As American lives are lost at a
devastating rate, the presidential race becomes a battle for the
very soul of the nation - challenging not just the Trump
presidency, but the very institutions of American democracy itself.
In this highly personal account of reporting on America in 2020,
Jon Sopel takes you behind the scenes of a White House in crisis
and an election in turmoil, expertly laying bare the real story of
the presidential campaign in a panoramic account of an election and
a year like no other.
Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that
is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of
Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its
former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich
state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its
own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a
vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage
based on 13 years of on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the
length and breadth of this enigmatic country that lies along the
ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural crossroads
where East meets West. Featuring tales of murder and abduction,
intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corruption, this book explores
how a president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself into a
potentate and the economically-struggling state he inherited at the
fall of the USSR into a swaggering 21st-century monocracy. A
colourful cast of characters brings the politics to life: from
strutting oligarch to sleeping villagers, from principled
politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to
courageous campaigners. Traversing dust-blown deserts and majestic
mountains, taking in glitzy cities and dystopian landscapes, Dark
Shadows conjures up Kazakhstan as a living, breathing place, full
of extraordinary people living extraordinary lives.
Pullout sections, poster supplements, contests, puzzles, and the
funny pages--the Sunday newspaper once delivered a parade of
information, entertainment, and spectacle for just a few pennies
each weekend. Paul Moore and Sandra Gabriele return to an era of
experimentation in early twentieth-century news publishing to chart
how the Sunday paper became an essential part of American leisure.
Transcending the constraints of newsprint while facing competition
from other media, Sunday editions borrowed forms from and
eventually partnered with magazines, film, and radio, inviting
people to not only read but watch and listen. This drive for mass
circulation transformed metropolitan news reading into a national
pastime, a change that encouraged newspapers to bundle Sunday
supplements into a panorama of popular culture that offered
something for everyone.
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