The Best American Magazine Writing 2019 presents articles honored by this year's National Magazine Awards, showcasing outstanding writing that addresses urgent topics such as justice, gender, power, and violence, both at home and abroad. The anthology features remarkable reporting, including the story of a teenager who tried to get out of MS-13, only to face deportation (ProPublica); an account of the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Politico); and a sweeping California Sunday Magazine profile of an agribusiness empire. Other journalists explore the indications of environmental catastrophe, from invasive lionfish (Smithsonian) to the omnipresence of plastic (National Geographic). Personal pieces consider the toll of mass incarceration, including Reginald Dwayne Betts's "Getting Out" (New York Times Magazine); "This Place Is Crazy," by John J. Lennon (Esquire); and Robert Wright's "Getting Out of Prison Meant Leaving Dear Friends Behind" (Marshall Project with Vice). From the pages of the Atlantic and the New Yorker, writers and critics discuss prominent political figures: Franklin Foer's "American Hustler" explores Paul Manafort's career of corruption; Jill Lepore recounts the emergence of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and Caitlin Flanagan and Doreen St. Felix reflect on the Kavanaugh hearings and #MeToo. Leslie Jamison crafts a portrait of the Museum of Broken Relationships (Virginia Quarterly Review), and Kasey Cordell and Lindsey B. Koehler ponder "The Art of Dying Well" (5280). A pair of never-before-published conversations illuminates the state of the American magazine: New Yorker writer Ben Taub speaks to Eric Sullivan of Esquire about pursuing a career as a reporter, alongside Taub's piece investigating how the Iraqi state is fueling a resurgence of ISIS. And Karolina Waclawiak of BuzzFeed News interviews McSweeney's editor Claire Boyle about challenges and opportunities for fiction at small magazines. That conversation is inspired by McSweeney's winning the ASME Award for Fiction, which is celebrated here with a story by Lesley Nneka Arimah, a magical-realist tale charged with feminist allegory.

Allan Jones launched Uncut magazine in 1997 and for 15 years wrote a popular monthly column called Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, based on his experiences as a music journalist in the 70s and 80s, a gilded time for the music press.

By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me...stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. From backstage brawls and drug blow-outs, to riots, superstar punch-ups, hotel room confessionals and tour bus lunacy, these are stories from the madness of a music scene now long gone.

From a certain perspective, the biggest political story of 2016 was how the candidate who bought three-quarters of the political ads lost to the one whose every provocative Tweet set the agenda for the day's news coverage. With the arrival of bot farms, microtargeted Facebook ads, and Cambridge Analytica, isn't the age of political ads on local TV coming to a close? You might think. But you'd be wrong to the tune of $4.4 billion just in 2016. In U.S. elections, there's a lot more at stake than the presidency. TV spending has gone up dramatically since 2006, for both presidential and down-ballot races for congressional seats, governorships, and state legislatures-and the 2020 campaign shows no signs of bucking this trend. When candidates don't enjoy the name recognition and celebrity of the presidential contenders, it's very much business as usual. They rely on the local TV newscasts, watched by 30 million people every day-not Tweets-to convey their messages to an audience more fragmented than ever. At the same time, the nationalization of news and consolidation of local stations under juggernauts like Nexstar Media and Sinclair Broadcasting mean a decreasing share of time devoted to down-ballot politics-almost 90 percent of 2016's local political stories focused on the presidential race. Without coverage of local issues and races, ad buys are the only chance most candidates have to get their messages in front of a broadcast audience. On local TV news, political ads create the reality of local races-a reality that is not meant to inform voters but to persuade them. Voters are left to their own devices to fill in the space between what the ads say-the bought reality-and what political stories used to cover.

The articles which Stendhal contributed as French correspondent for the 'London Magazine', 'New Monthly Magazine' and other English Marketing Reviews of the 1820s are here brought together in a single volume, the only edition available in English. In them Stendhal - defying fashion and giving proof of the bold originality of his creative writing - provides an illuminating and often entertaining commentary on the politics and mores of post-Napoleonic France and Italy, and reveals his outstanding and all too rarely acknowledged gifts as a reviewer and literary critic. Together with the articles from the English Marketing Reviews, this edition includes translations of articles, essays and notes on Cornielle, Scott and Lord Byron, who was on terms of close acquaintance with Stendhal during his stay in Milan in 1816.

As a photojournalist, Feni spends a lot of time photographing service delivery strikes and protest in the townships. Often the images that make it into the newspapers are only of the looting and burnings. Renting a backyard room in an informal settlement, Feni was troubled by this kind of portrayal of the lack of service delivery and the life of the marginalised.

As he says, “I live at the back of an RDP house in Mfuleni on the Cape Flats. I experience issues like poor sanitation, access to clean water and the flooding first hand”. Photographing the lack of sanitation was not pleasant for him, but he did not want a photographer from outside the community telling their stories while he watched on. “That too would be a Drain on Our Dignity and that’s what inspired this project”.

A Drain On Our Dignity echoes the ground-breaking images produced by Ernest Cole in the early 1960s, showing black life under apartheid. It is a sensitive and honest look at what lack of services is, what it does to a community and what it does to a people.

Without the screaming, fighting or burning – these captivating images compel the reader to look at what is happening in the Cape Town townships.

The biggest and most comprehensive volume on Steve McCurry published to date and the final word on forty years of McCurry's incredible work. Written and compiled by Bonnie McCurry, Steve's sister and President of the McCurry Foundation, Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures is the ultimate book of McCurry's images and his approach to photography. The book brings together all of McCurry's key adventures and influences, from his very first journalistic images taken in the aftermath of the 1977 Johnstown floods, to his breakthrough journey into Afghanistan hidden among the mujahideen, his many travels across India and Pakistan, his coverage of the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War and the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, up to his most-recent work. Totalling over 350 images, the selection of photographs includes his best-known shots as well as over 100 previously unpublished images. Also included are personal notes, telegrams and visual ephemera from his travels and assignments, all accompanied by Bonnie McCurry's authoritative text - drawn from her unique relationship with Steve - as well as reflections from many of Steve's friends and colleagues. Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures is the complete, definitive volume on McCurry

'Maeve's Times is funny and clever and kind, which are excellent qualities in both books and people' Irish Times 'As someone who fell off a chair not long ago trying to hear what they were saying at the next table in a restaurant, I suppose I am obsessively interested in what some might consider the trivia of other people's lives.' Maeve Binchy is well known for her bestselling novels, but for many years Maeve was a journalist. From 'The Student Train' to 'Plane Bores' and 'Bathroom Joggers' to 'When Beckett met Binchy', these articles have all the warmth, wit and humanity of her fiction. Arranged in decades, from the 1960s to the 2000s, and including Maeve's first and last ever piece of writing for the Irish Times, the columns also give a fascinating insight into the author herself. With an introduction written by her husband, the writer Gordon Snell, this collection of timeless writing reminds us of why the leading Irish writer was so universally loved.

May Kennedy McCord, lovingly nicknamed "First Lady of the Ozarks" and "Queen of the Hillbillies," spent half a century sharing the history, songs, and stories of her native Ozarks through newspaper columns, radio programs, and music festivals. Though her work made her one of the twentieth century's preeminent folklorists, McCord was first and foremost an entertainer-at one time nearly as renowned as the hills she loved. Despite the encouragement of her contemporaries, McCord never published a collection of her work. In 1956, Vance Randolph wrote to her, "If you didn't have such a mental block against writing books, I could show you how to make a book out of extracts from your columns. It would be very little work, and sell like hotcakes. . . . I could write a solemn little introduction, telling the citizens what a fine gal you are! The hell of it is, most of the readers know all about you." In Queen of the Hillbillies, editors Patti McCord and Kristene Sutliff at last bring together the best of McCord's published and previously unpublished writings to share her knowledge, humor, and inimitable spirit with a new generation of readers.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE WEEK BY THE NEW YORK POST ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIOBOOK A from-the-trenches view of New York Daily News and New York Post runners and photographers as they stop at nothing to break the story and squash their tabloid arch-rivals. When author Mike Jaccarino was offered a job at the Daily News in 2006, he was asked a single question: "Kid, what are you going to do to help us beat the Post?" That was the year things went sideways at the News, when the New York Post surpassed its nemesis in circulation for the first time in the history of both papers. Tasked with one job-crush the Post-Jaccarino here provides the behind-the-scenes story of how the runners and shooters on both sides would do anything and everything to get the scoop before their opponents. The New York Daily News and the New York Post have long been the Hatfields and McCoys of American media: two warring tabloids in a town big enough for only one of them. As digital news rendered print journalism obsolete, the fight to survive in NYC became an epic, Darwinian battle. In America's Last Great Newspaper War, Jaccarino exposes the untold story of this tabloid death match of such ferocity and obsession its like has not occurred since Pulitzer- Hearst. Told through the eyes of hungry "runners" (field reporters) and "shooters" (photographers) who would employ phony police lights to overcome traffic, Mike Jaccarino's memoir unmasks the do-whatever-it-takes era of reporting-where the ends justified the means and nothing was off-limits. His no-holds-barred account describes sneaking into hospitals, months-long stakeouts, infiltrating John Gotti's crypt, bidding wars for scoops, high-speed car chases with Hillary Clinton, O.J. Simpson, and the baby mama of a philandering congressman-all to get that coveted front-page story. Today, few runners and shooters remain on the street. Their age and exploits are as bygone as the News-Post war and American newspapers, generally. Where armies once battled, often no one is covering the story at all. Funding for this book was provided by: Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund

A powerful and authoritative selection of critical essays and reviews by poet Padraic Fallon. Skilfully compiled and edited by his son Brian Fallon, this book is published to mark the centenary of his father's birth, and testifies to the enduring value of literature in the flux of the twenty-first century. Padraic Fallon (1905 - 1974), one of the foremost Irish poets of his generation and a prolific writer of radio plays, was also an active essay-reviewer in the leading periodicals of his day. His literary criticism was incisive and witty, his erudition lightly worn. Disinterred from old files of The Bell, The Dublin Magazine and The Irish Times, his work remains fresh and readable decades on. Fallon writes authoritatively about the key figures of the Literary Revival: Gregory, Yeats, Stephans, Synge, Shaw and O'Casey - he knew many of them - and also of his contemporaries F.R. Higgins and Austin Clarke, with whom he shared a dedicated engagement with the Irish tradition. He comines frank judgements of Eliot, Pound, Graves, Auden, Gunn, Lowell, Larkin, Kinsella and others with fascinating detours into an East Galway childhood and the folk memories of Antony Raftery. The book is built around a core of previously uncollected work, beginning with the controversial, highly influential 'Poet's Journal' (The Bell, 1951-2) and closing with the wide-ranging 'Verse Chronicles' (Dublin Magazine, 1956-8).

In 2016, a young Afghan driver and translator named Omar makes the heart-wrenching choice to flee his war-torn country, saying goodbye to Laila, the love of his life, without knowing when they might be reunited again. He is one of millions of refugees who leave their homes that year. Matthieu Aikins, a journalist living in Kabul, decides to follow his friend. In order to do so, he must leave his own passport and identity behind to go underground on the refugee trail with Omar. Their odyssey across land and sea from Afghanistan to Europe brings them face to face with the people at heart of the migration crisis: smugglers, cops, activists, and the men, women and children fleeing war in search of a better life. As setbacks and dangers mount for the two friends, Matthieu is also drawn into the escape plans of Omar's entire family, including Maryam, the matriarch who has fought ferociously for her children's survival. Harrowing yet hopeful, this exceptional work brings into sharp focus one of the most contentious issues of our times. The Naked Don't Fear the Water is a tale of love and friendship across borders, and an inquiry into our shared journey in a divided world.

This year's Best American Magazine Writing features articles on politics, culture, sports, sex, race, celebrity, and more. Selections include Ta-Nehisi Coates's intensely debated "The Case For Reparations" (The Atlantic) and Monica Lewinsky's reflections on the public-humiliation complex and how the rules of the game have (and have not) changed (Vanity Fair). Amanda Hess recounts her chilling encounter with Internet sexual harassment (Pacific Standard) and John Jeremiah Sullivan shares his investigation into one of American music's greatest mysteries (New York Times Magazine). The anthology also presents Rebecca Traister's acerbic musings on gender politics (The New Republic) and Jerry Saltz's fearless art criticism (New York). James Verini reconstructs an eccentric love affair against the slow deterioration of Afghanistan in the twentieth century (The Atavist); Roger Angell offers affecting yet humorous reflections on life at ninety-three (The New Yorker); Tiffany Stanley recounts her poignant experience caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's (National Journal); and Jonathan Van Meter takes an entertaining look at fashion's obsession with being a social-media somebody (Vogue). Brian Phillips describes his surreal adventures in the world of Japanese ritual and culture (Grantland), and Emily Yoffe reveals the unforeseen casualties in the effort to address the college rape crisis (Slate). The collection concludes with a work of fiction by Donald Antrim, exploring the geography of loss. (The New Yorker).

This volume draws together the finest writing in the Guardian from 2006. From eyewitness reports to obituaries, art criticism to sports reporting, diary stories to editorials, politics to travel, and business to the Internet.

Travelling from Madrid to The Valley of the Fallen, through Castile and Leon and across the fiercely contested region of Catalonia, Christopher Finnigan meets a remarkable cast of characters behind some of the biggest political events Spain has witnessed in decades. Whether it is the Indignados left-wing activists rethinking society, the everyday citizens sitting in parliament, or the Catalan separatists fighting for a new nation, The New Spanish Revolutions meets those struggling at the heart of historic change. Spain today finds itself in the grip of immense social upheaval, still shaken by the financial crash of 2008 and still struggling with its fascist past. Against a fragmented and polarised backdrop, Christopher Finnigan discovers how individuals and ideas that were once outside the mainstream are now shaping the nation's future.

A defining collection from Alistair Cooke's legendary BBC Radio broadcasts, guiding us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States 'No one else succeeded in explaining to the English-speaking world ... the idiosyncrasies of a country at once so familiar, and yet so utterly foreign' Independent When Alistair Cooke retired in February 2004 he was acclaimed as one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. His Letter from America radio series, which began in 1946 and continued every week for fifty-eight years until his retirement, kept the world in touch with what was happening in America. Cooke's wry, humane and liberal style both informed and entertained his audience. The selection here, made largely by Cooke himself and supplemented by his literary executor, gives us the very best of these legendary broadcasts. It covers key moments from the assassination of Kennedy through to the Vietnam War and Watergate to 9/11, the Iraq War and anticipates the 2004 elections. It includes portraits of the great and the good from Charlie Chaplin to Martin Luther King, Jr, and topics as varied as civil rights, golf, jazz and the changing colours of a New England fall. Each Letter contributes to a captivating portrait of a nation - and of a man.

This short book calls to account the government misrulers and corporate criminals who made suffering from the global coronavirus pandemic more acute. Modeled on a famous 1940 bestseller--a pamphlet exposing appeasers of Nazi Germany--Guilty Men shows how the crisis has been stoked by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful men. The rogues gallery begins with Donald Trump, who deliberately downplayed the crisis despite knowing its dangers, as well as his international political allies, above all Boris Johnson. Billionaire politicians like Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler moved stocks at the same time they were telling Americans all was well . Political charlatans like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos undermined public safety in order to advance their agenda, Trump-controlled agencies, led by the ever-crooked Federal Reserve, bailed out Wall Street while failing to provide basic relief for workers. Libertarian "think tanks" like the Ayn Rand Institute decried public expenditures but were first in line to get bailout checks. Pharmaceutical companies gamed the vaccine race, and the most rapacious global corporations like Facebook, Visa, and Pfizer have found the pandemic to be very profitable indeed, vastly enriching the already grotesquely bloated fortunes of trillionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Charles Koch. Guilty Men closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, initiated by newly elected Franklin Roosevelt, that took aim at what FDR called "speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering" that stoked the Depression. The commission led to some of the most far-reaching reforms in US history, as well as sensational hearings that led to the fall of the leading bankers and financiers of that era.

In Easterine Kire's stories, the boundaries between magic and reality drift away, leaving us to marvel at simple yet fantastical folktales about human connection. The title story in this collection is about feeling trapped by other people's definitions of who we are. The Bear-man finds love in the beautiful and compassionate Rain-maiden but thinks he would never be good enough for her. He concludes that if he reveals his true feelings she would ridicule him like everyone in his life has always done. He grows gruff and antisocial, believing that he could never find friendship-least of all, love. The other stories in this collection represent oral narratives from the people of Nagaland in northeast India, stories shared privately around a glowing hearth-spirit stories that the narrators swear are true encounters. While "Forest Song," "New Road," "River and Earth Story," and "The Man Who Lost His Spirit" were narrated to the author by local storytellers, "The Man Who Went to Heaven" and "One Day" are entirely based on Naga folktales. "The Weretigerman," meanwhile, is woven around the pre-Christian Naga tradition of certain men becoming dual-souled with the tiger. In these stories, illustrated in full color by graphic artist Sunandini Banerjee, Kire brings Nagaland come alive with her rich portrayal of both the natural and the spiritual world, which, to the Naga mind, harmoniously coexisted until the recent past.

Of all the great novelists writing today, none shows the same gift as Martin Amis for writing non-fiction - his essays, literary criticism and journalism are justly acclaimed. The Rub of Time comprises superb critical pieces on Amis's heroes Nabokov, Bellow and Larkin to brilliantly funny ruminations on sport, Las Vegas, John Travolta and the pornography industry. The collection includes his essay on Princess Diana and a tribute to his great friend Christopher Hitchens, but at the centre of the book, perhaps inevitably, are essays on politics, and in particular the American election campaigns of 2012 and 2016. One of the very few consolations of Donald Trump's rise to power is that Martin Amis is there to write about him.

Drones and Journalism explores the increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, by the global media for researching and newsgathering purposes. Phil Chamberlain examines the technological development and capabilities of contemporary drone hardware and the future of drone journalism. He also considers the complex place of the media's drone use in relation to international laws, as well as the ethical challenges and issues raised by the practice. Chapters cover topics including the use of drones in investigative reporting, in reporting of humanitarian crises, and the use of this new technology in more mainstream media, like film and TV. The book also presents exclusive interviews with drone experts and practitioners and draws on a wide range of disciplines to put the practice into a historical, political and social context. Professionals and students of Journalism and Media Studies will find this an important critical contribution to these fields, as Phil Chamberlain astutely charts the rise of the reliance on drones by the media worldwide.

Not a Novel is the best of Jenny Erpenbeck's non-fiction. Moving and insightful, the pieces range from personal essays and literary criticism to reflections on Germany's history, interrogating life and politics, language and freedom, hope and despair. By turns both luminous and explosive, this collection shows one of the most acclaimed European writers reckoning with her country's divided past, and responding to the world today with intelligence and humanity.

Shortlisted for the 2017 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. 'How much risk is worth taking for so beautiful a prize?' The Magician's Glass by award-winning writer Ed Douglas is a collection of eight recent essays on some of the biggest stories and best-known personalities in the world of climbing. In the title essay, he writes about failure on Annapurna III in 1981, one of the boldest attempts in Himalayan mountaineering on one of the most beautiful lines - a line that remains unclimbed to this day. Douglas writes about bitter controversies, like that surrounding Ueli Steck's disputed solo ascent of the south face of Annapurna, the fate of Toni Egger on Cerro Torre in 1959 - when Cesare Maestri claimed the pair had made the first ascent, and the rise and fall of Slovenian ace Tomaz Humar. There are profiles of two stars of the 1980s: the much-loved German Kurt Albert, the father of the 'redpoint', and the enigmatic rock star Patrick Edlinger, a national hero in his native France who lost his way. In Crazy Wisdom, Douglas offers fresh perspectives on the impact mountaineering has on local communities and the role climbers play in the developing world. The final essay explores the relationship between art and alpinism as a way of understanding why it is that people climb mountains.

Jordan's diverse socioeconomic make-up encapsulates, like no other Middle Eastern state, both the array of pressing short-term problems facing the region, and the underlying challenges that Arab states will need to face once the current spate of civil conflicts is over: meaningful youth employment, female participation in politics, and integration of refugees into society. This book tells the story of Jordan through the lives of ordinary people, including a political cartoonist, a Syrian refugee, a Jihadist and a female parliamentarian. The raw voices and everyday struggles of these people shine a fresh light on the politics, religion, and society of a culture coming to terms with the harsh reality of modernisation and urbanisation at a time of regional upheaval. With her deep knowledge of Jordan's landscape, language and culture, Rana Sweis sketches an intimate portrait of the intricacies and complexities of life in the Middle East. Rather than focusing on how individuals are affected by events in the region, she reveals a cast of characters shaping their own lives and times. Voices of Jordan shares those stories in all of their rich detail, offering a living, breathing social and political history.