During the fast-paced and fascinating years that Bill McIlwain spent as editor of some of North America's most prestigious newspapers, he met and worked with the great, the petty, the famous, the eccentric. He also confronted his problem with alcoholism. In Dancing Naked with the Rolling Stones, McIlwain tells both sides of the story-and how he learned to cope, finding peace and happiness in radical ways. His humble, humorous, thought-provoking account gives readers an intimate glimpse into American newspapering and, at the same time, into his own soul. From the heyday of Harry Guggenheim and Alicia Patterson's groundbreaking Newsday to Boston and Washington insider politics, from the world-changing events of the 1960s and '70s to the Sun Belt suburbs of the 1980s and '90s, Bill McIlwain's tales entertain and inspire.

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken's death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: "Happy Days," "Heathen Days," "Newspaper Day"s, "Prejudices," "Treatise on the Gods," "On Politics," "Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work," "Minority Report," and "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy."

These thirty-five essays--each a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse--have been selected from six volumes originally published between 1919 and 1927.

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken's death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: "Happy Days," "Heathen Days," "Newspaper Day"s, "Prejudices," "Treatise on the Gods," "On Politics," "Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work," "Minority Report," and "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy."

These seventy political pieces from the 1920s and 1930s are drawn from Mencken's famous Monday columns in the "Baltimore Evening Sun."

David Langford has written for every issue of SFX, the top-selling British magazine about science fiction, since its launch in 1995. His sparkling column-imaginatively titled "Langford"-is notoriously the first page readers turn to. Now at last, The SEX Column collects over 130 instalments and extra features in book form.

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 organised into ten themed sections. Each section addresses a specific conceptual or historical issue, such as the impact of serial publication upon practices of reading and authorship. The themed 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.

As National Public Radio's much loved and respected senior foreign correspondent Anne Garrels has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In "Naked in Baghdad" she reveals how as one of only sixteen non-embedded journalists who stayed in the now legendary Palestine Hotel throughout the American invasion she managed to deliver the most immediate, insightful and independent reports with unparalleled vividness and immediacy.
Her evolving relationship with her Iraqi driver/minder Amer, and the wonderful e-mail bulletins sent to friends by her husband, Vint Lawrence, counterpoint the daily events of her life in Baghdad, and result in a deeply moving, and intimate portrait by one of bravest and most enlightening news reporters.

In 2004, it was widely reported in the British and Zambian press that Roy Clarke, columnist and satirist known as 'Kalaki', on the The Post, Zambia's major independent daily, faced deportation. Following a column entitled 'Mfuwe', the government had announced he was 'a threat to peace and good order'. Clarke refused to succumb however, or indeed apologise. Instead, supported by his editor, he continued to champion the freedom of the press in Zambia, freedom of expression in general and the cause of Zambian journalism. This book brings together a collection of Clarke's writings, published over a period of five years. His writings are characterised by irony, satire and caustic wit, exposing folly, vice and hypocrisy. They are accompanied by the political cartoons of Trevor Ford, popularly know as 'Yuss'. Fred M'Membe, editor of The Post, provides the introduction to the book, in which he comments: 'Nowadays we find ourselves stuck in a culture of zealous worship of leaders, a culture that would look primitive in the eyes of our ancestors. Our modern African societies have established a reputation for intolerance that is difficult to match....I see Roy's work as attempting to confront this situation, to help us return to our more tolerant Zambian culture; a culture of liberating, life-giving and enjoyable laughter '

With each news day, history unfolds as steadfast journalists uncover facts and public opinion. Drawn from the "New York Times"'s archive of an unparalleled eighty-one Pulitzer Prizes, "Written into History" offers a fascinating record of the twentieth century.
"The Times"'s award-winning reports range from Antarctic dispatches on the Byrd expedition to the eyewitness account of the atomic bomb, from the First Amendment battle to publish the Pentagon Papers to the personal narrative of an interracial friendship. Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Lewis culled the newspaper's most acclaimed writing to chronicle life and history as it was happening, with such highlights as David Halberstam on Vietnam, J. Anthony Lukas on hippies, Anna Quindlen on AIDS, and John F. Burns on the Taliban.
Lewis tells the stories behind the stories, describing journalism's changing role in the world. For armchair historians and aspiring reporters, this is a rich and memorable portrait of a century by the men and women who most artfully observed it.

'Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations' - Greta Thunberg For more than twenty years Naomi Klein's books have defined our era, chronicling the exploitation of people and the planet and demanding justice. On Fire gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing from the frontline of climate breakdown, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of what we choose to do next. Here is Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but also as a spiritual and imaginative one. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of 'perpetual now,' to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of 'climate barbarism,' this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink. With dispatches from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, the smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, post-hurricane Puerto Rico and a Vatican attempting an unprecedented 'ecological conversion,' Klein makes the case that we will rise to the existential challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis. This is the fight for our lives. On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the energy of a rising political movement demanding change now.

'Wittily truthful ... A true classic, whose title has entered the language'  
Times

The maxim that work expands to fill the time available for its completion is now accepted as an indisputable fact of office life. In this tremendously entertaining and painfully accurate book, C. Northcote Parkinson gives us nine more laws concerning the workplace.  Among them is the rule that people always flag three years before retirement; that committees spend more time discussing small sums of money than large ones; that good recruitment is a science - and an art - and that the best time to arrive at a party is exactly forty-five minutes late.  First published in 1957, Parkinson's Law remains the ultimate guide to the absurdity of working life.

As journalist Sam Quinones convincingly demonstrates, much of Mexico was already changing before the July 2000 presidential elections which ousted the PRI and presented the world with President-elect Vincente Fox. Fox's victory marked the triumph of another Mexico, a vital, energetic, and creative Mexico tracked by Quinones for over six years.

"This side of Mexico gets very little press. . . . yet it is the best of the country. . . . people who have the spunk to imagine something else and instinctively flee the enfeebling embrace of PRI paternalism. . . . newly realistic telenovellas show the gray government censor that the country is too lively to abide his boss's dictates. . . . Some twelve million Mexicans reside year-round in the United States. . . . [so] the United States is now part of the Mexican reality and is where this other side of Mexico is often found, reinventing itself."--from the introduction.

Quinones merges keen observation with astute interviews and storytelling in his search for an authentic modern Mexico. He finds it in part in emigrants, people who use wits and imagination to strike out on their own. In poignant stories from north of the border--about Oaxacan basketball leagues in southern California and the late singing legend Chalino SAAA1/2nchez whose songs of drug smugglers spurred the popularity of the narcocorrido--Quinones shows how another Mexico is reinventing itself in America today. But most of his stories are from deep inside Mexico itself. There a dynamic sector exists. It is made up of those who instinctively shunned the enfeebling embrace of the PRI's paternalism, including scrappy entrepreneurs such as the Popsicle Kings of Tocumbo and Indianmigrant farmworkers who found a future in the desert of Baja California. Here, too, are true tales from ignored margins of society, including accounts of drag queens and lynchings. From the fringes of the country, Quinones suggests, emerge some of the most telling and central truths about modern Mexico and how it is changing.

"This book expands our knowledge of modern Mexico many times over. Quinones unearths a wealth of material that has in fact gone unnoticed or been hidden."--Professor Francisco Lomeli, University of California, Santa Barbara

This collection of essays assesses the evolving fields of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The topics covered in this updated and expanded edition include the use of Prozac, the nature of white racism, William Styron's Darkness Visible and van Gogh's fever of genius.

Thirty-two years ago Mrs Li and Mr Wu from Zhejiang abandoned their second baby daughter at a marketplace. Mrs Wang Maochen from Beijing has seven children, but six of them are illegal so they could not go to university, could not take a job, go to the doctor, or marry, or even buy a train ticket. Zhao Min from Guangzhou first learned about the concept of a sibling at university, in her town there were no sisters or brothers. With the Chinese government now adapting to a two child policy, Secrets and Siblings outlines the scale of its tragic consequences, showing how Chinese family and society has been forever changed. In doing so it also challenges many of our misconceptions about family life in China, arguing that it is the state, rather than popular prejudice, that has hindered the adoption of girls within China. At once brutal and beautifully hopeful, Secrets and Siblings asks what the state and its children will do now that they are becoming adults.

This treasury of selected passages from the writings and addresses of perhaps the most impressive leader of the Catholic Church the world has ever known offers, as its editor suggests, "a harvest from the mind and heart of Pope Wojtyla." And so here is a chance for the modern reader, engaged in various daily tasks, to spend a few moments with the Pope each day of the liturgical year, contemplating his reflections on the mystery and the example of Christ; and on the church, man, the family, the lives of the saints, the meaning of holidays, and the place of faith in daily life.

His personal concerns as expressed in these passages include such topics as "Sharing with Others," "To Be in Peace," "Consumer Society," "Family Prayer," and "The Great Divine Trial," about the meaning of his near-assassination. Through these pages of calm reflection each day of the year, all will find a moment of peaceful repose from the occupations of life.

Acclaimed personal writing from one of our most out-spoken essayists, on disability, on family, on being an impolite woman, and on the opporunities and "gifts" of a difficult life.

New York journalist Pete Hamill is among the last of a dying breed: the old-school generalist who writes about anything and everything, guided only by passionate and boundless curiosity. In this collection of his finest writings since 1970, Hamill tackles such diverse subjects as what television and crack have in common, how Mike Tyson spent his time in prison, and what it's like to realize you're middle-aged -- not to mention Octavio Paz, Brooklyn's Seventh Avenue, Frank Sinatra, American immigration policy, Northern Ireland, and Madonna. Piecework is Hamill at his very best.

The era between the Civil War and the end of World War I, marked by increasing nation-building, immigration, internal migration, and racial tension in the United States, saw the rise of local color literature that described through "lived experiences" the peculiarities of regional life. This anthology brings together works from every part of the country, written by men and women of many cultures, ethnicities, ideologies, and literary styles.

Organized geographically, American Local Color Writing features such familiar writers as Joel Chandler Harris, Kate Chopin, Hamlin Garland, and Sarah Orne Jewett, and introduces less well-known voices like Sui Sin Far, Abraham Cahan, and Zitkala-Sa. The writings sheds light on varying concepts of "the American identity": Charles Chesnutt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Pauline Hopkins, and others present a distinct African-American experience; shifting notions of gender and sexuality come to light not only in pieces by women but also in nostalgic renditions of frontier life as the embodiment of masculine virtues and values; and racial, class, and ethnic stereotypes are reproduced and challenged in many of the stories.

One of our most trenchant columnists takes the measure of America in the last four years.

A collection of personal essays on topics as diverse as the nature of allergies, a meditation on bats, and the significance of 1974, from a writer with a uniquely acute, subtle, and sophisticated voice.

Veteran journalist Pete Hamill has never covered just politics. Or just sports. Or just the entertainment business, the mob, foreign affairs, social issues, the art world, or New York City. He has in fact written about all these subjects, and many more, in his years as a contributor to such national magazines as Esquire, Vanity Fair, and New York, and as a columnist at the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Village Voice, and other newspapers. Seasoned by more than thirty years as a New York newspaperman, Hamill writes on an extraordinarily wide variety of topics in powerful language that is personal, tough-minded, clearheaded, always provocative. Piecework is a rich and varied collection of Hamill's best writing since 1970, on such diverse subjects as what television and crack have in common, why winning isn't everything, stickball, Nicaragua, Donald Trump, why American immigration policy toward Mexico is all wrong, Brooklyn's Seventh Avenue, and Frank Sinatra, not to mention Octavio Paz, what it's like to realize you're middle-aged, Northern Ireland, New York City then and now, how Mike Tyson spent his time in prison, and much more. This collection proves him once again to be among the last of a dying breed: the old-school generalist, who writes about anything and everything, guided only by passionate and boundless curiosity. Piecework is Hamill at his very best.

Miami, Summer 1968. The Vietnam War is raging; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy have just been assassinated. The Republican Party meets in Miami and picks Richard Nixon as its candidate, to little fanfare. But when the Democrats back Lyndon Johnson's ineffectual vice president, Hubert Humphrey, the city of Chicago erupts. Antiwar protesters fill the streets and the police run amok, beating and arresting demonstrators and delegates alike, all broadcast on live television, and captured in these pages by one of America's fiercest intellects.

From his early years Tom Weir MBE was set on making his way as an explorer, writer and photographer, a progress interrupted by World War Two but then leading to expeditions ranging from the Himalayas to Greenland. For over forty years his feature 'My Month' appeared in the Scots Magazine, reflecting his fascination with Scotland, its remote corners, people and wildlife - interests that made his award-winning TV programme Weir's Way so popular. From sources published and unpublished this collection of Tom Weir's writing has been selected by Hamish Brown from the whole body of his life's work.

Part diary and part reportage, "The Soccer War" is a remarkable chronicle of war in the late twentieth century. Between 1958 and 1980, working primarily for the Polish Press Agency, Kapuscinski covered twenty-seven revolutions and coups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Here, with characteristic cogency and emotional immediacy, he recounts the stories behind his official press dispatches--searing firsthand accounts of the frightening, grotesque, and comically absurd aspects of life during war. "The Soccer War" is a singular work of journalism.

For the first time, one book gives voice to the haunting, painful, tender, and healing tales of those who lost so much in America's least popular war.