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One day in the spring of 2013, a box appeared outside a
fourth-floor apartment door in Brooklyn, New York. The recipient,
who didn't know the sender, only knew she was supposed to bring
this box to a friend, who would ferry it to another friend. This
was Edward Snowden's box-printouts of documents proving that the US
government had built a massive surveillance apparatus and used it
to spy on its own people-and the friend on the end of this chain
was filmmaker Laura Poitras. Thus the biggest national security
leak of the digital era was launched via a remarkably analog
network, the US Postal Service. This is just one of the odd, ironic
details that emerges from the story of how Jessica Bruder and Dale
Maharidge, two experienced journalists but security novices (and
the friends who received and ferried the box) got drawn into the
Snowden story as behind-the-scenes players. Their initially
stumbling, increasingly paranoid, and sometimes comic efforts to
help bring Snowden's leaks to light, and ultimately, to understand
their significance, unfold in an engrossing narrative that includes
emails and diary entries from Poitras. This is an illuminating
essay on the status of transparency, privacy, and trust in the age
of surveillance.
"This is a book ripped from the headlines, from Black Lives Matter
to recently thriving downtowns stripped of office workers and
service workers. Those catching the brunt of it all, those with the
steepest hills to climb, may have been fucked at birth. But for
everyone, as Maharidge observes, the feeling of safety is folly. A
sharp wake-up call to heed the new Depression and to recognize the
humanity of those hit hardest." -Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
"Dale Maharidge takes us coast to coast in 2020, down highways
along which he first reported decades ago. His honed class
awareness-unrivaled among contemporary journalists-reveals that
today's confluent health, economic and social crises are the
logical conclusion to generations of unvalidated, untreated despair
in a wealthy nation. Forget hollow commentary from detached
television news studios in New York City. Fucked at Birth is the
truth." -Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and
Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Pulitzer prize-winning
journalist Dale Maharidge has spent his career documenting the
downward spiral of the American working class. Poverty is both
reality and destiny for increasing numbers of people in the 2020s
and, as Maharidge discovers spray-painted inside an abandoned gas
station in the California desert, it is a fate often handed down
from birth. Motivated by this haunting phrase-"Fucked at
Birth"-Maharidge explores the realities of being poor in America in
the coming decade, as pandemic, economic crisis and social
revolution up-end the country. Part raw memoir, part dogged,
investigative journalism, Fucked At Birth channels the history of
poverty in America to help inform the voices Maharidge encounters
daily. In an unprecedented time of social activism amid economic
crisis, when voices everywhere are rising up for change,
Maharidge's journey channels the spirits of George Orwell and James
Agee, raising questions about class, privilege, and the very
concept of "upward mobility," while serving as a final call to
action. From Sacramento to Denver, Youngstown to New York City,
Fucked At Birth dares readers to see themselves in those suffering
most, and to finally-after decades of refusal-recalibrate what we
are going to do about it.
One day in the spring of 2013, a box appeared outside a
fourth-floor apartment door in Brooklyn, New York. The recipient,
who didn't know the sender, only knew she was supposed to bring
this box to a friend, who would ferry it to another friend. This
was Edward Snowden's box-printouts of documents proving that the US
government had built a massive surveillance apparatus and used it
to spy on its own people-and the friend on the end of this chain
was filmmaker Laura Poitras. Thus the biggest national security
leak of the digital era was launched via a remarkably analog
network, the US Postal Service. This is just one of the odd, ironic
details that emerges from the story of how Jessica Bruder and Dale
Maharidge, two experienced journalists but security novices (and
the friends who received and ferried the box) got drawn into the
Snowden story as behind-the-scenes players. Their initially
stumbling, increasingly paranoid, and sometimes comic efforts to
help bring Snowden's leaks to light, and ultimately, to understand
their significance, unfold in an engrossing narrative that includes
emails and diary entries from Poitras. This is an illuminating
essay on the status of transparency, privacy, and trust in the age
of surveillance.
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Homeland (Paperback)
Dale Maharidge
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R356
R296
Discovery Miles 2 960
Save R60 (17%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Homeland is Pulitzer Prize winning author Maharidge's biggest and
most ambitious book yet, weaving together the disparate and
contradictory strands of contemporary American society-common
decency alongside race rage, the range of dissenting voices, and
the roots of discontent that defy political affiliation. Here are
American families who can no longer pay their medical bills, who've
lost high-wage-earning jobs to NAFTA. And here are white
supremacists who claim common ground with progressives. Maharidge's
approach is rigorously historical, creating a tapestry of today as
it is lived in America, a self-portrait that is shockingly
different from what we're used to seeing and yet which rings of
truth.
Sgt. Steve Maharidge, like many of his generation, hardly ever
talked about the war. The only sign of it was a single black and
white photograph that he pinned to the wall of his basement, where,
in his spare time, he would grind steel. The picture showed
Maharidge with one of his comrades---he never said who. In front of
his son, Maharidge once yelled over the sound of his steel grinders
at the photograph: "They said I killed him, and it wasn't my
fault!" After Steve Maharidge's death, his son Dale, an adult now,
began a quest to understand his father's outburst: What had
happened during the battle for Okinawa, and why his father had
remained haunted and all but silent about his experience and the
unnamed man. In his quest for the soldier, Maharidge sought out the
survivors of Love Company, men in their late 70s and 80s, many of
whom had never before spoken so openly and emotionally about what
they saw and experienced on Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa of World
War II began in April 1945---in the following four months, an
estimated 250,000 Japanese soldiers and native Okinawans would
perish, as would 12,000 American soldiers. Americans called the
battle Operation Iceberg, while the Japanese called it tetsu no
ame, or the rain of steel. In Bringing Mulligan Home, Maharidge
delivers an affecting narrative of war and its aftermath, of
fathers and sons, of the generation that survives the shell-shocked
men who fought on Okinawa. In a small way, Bringing Mulligan Home
fills the silence that has haunted the post-war generation. An
established scholar of the American working class, Maharidge also
masterfully paints a picture of the industrial working-class
landscape that drove men to enlist, and the United States that
awaited them upon return.
Denison, Iowa, is as close to the heart of Middle America as it
gets. The hometown of Donna Reed, Denison has adopted "It's a
wonderful life" as its slogan and painted the phrase on the water
tower that hovers over everything in town. And in many respects,
life is pretty good here: it's a quiet town, a great place to raise
children; the crime rate is low, the schools strong. It's home to
the county's only Wal-Mart and a factory that does a booming
business in antiterrorism barriers. For outsiders looking in, there
is something familiar and comforting about Denison -- it conforms
to the picture of the wholesome, corn-fed heartland which we as a
nation cherish and which we think we know so well.
But something new and unfamiliar is happening in Denison, and
traditional viewpoints and partisan labels don't quite capture it.
The change goes beyond the post-9/11 loss of innocence; the sense
of unease and, in some cases, of rebirth began well before 2001.
Relations between the growing Latino population and the established
Anglo citizenry are not always smooth. The industries that still
predominate have become a mixed blessing for many people -- in the
1980s the meat-processing plant, for instance, froze wages, and
they have remained basically static to this day.
For many years, Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson have made it
their business to document interior America. In 1990 they won the
Pulitzer Prize for their book And Their Children After Them, a
conscious homage to the 1941 classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
by James Agee and Walker Evans. To gather their observations and
insights on Denison, Maharidge and Williamson lived there for a
year, spending time among the 8,000 people who live, love, work,
run for office, go to school, and sometimes struggle to get by
there. From the Lutheran woman who singlehandedly teaches English
to Latino immigrants seeking grueling work in meatpacking plants to
the leaders who struggle to rescue the community from economic ruin
to the Latino businessman whose career is saved by two white men
risking the wrath of small-town politics, the author and
photographer trace the intersections of lives, the successes and
failures, the real stories beneath Denison's mom-and-apple-pie
surface.
Through Maharidge's gorgeous, plainspoken prose and Williamson's
stunning photography, we are privy to a sweeping perspective
layered with a microscopic depth of observation, and a searingly
honest portrait tempered by heartfelt compassion. Denison, Iowa is
a big, beautiful book about a small town at a critical time in our
history -- and it's the crowning work of a brilliant,
quarter-century partnership.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Maharidge's most ambitious work yet
takes on the disparate and contradictory strands of contemporary
American society--common decency alongside race rage, the range of
dissenting voices, and the roots of discontent that defy political
affiliation.
Some time after the year 2050, the population of the United States will be less than half white. In California, however, this seismic shift in demographics is due to take place before 2000. What happens in California, how the state chooses to adapt to its new identity, will have a tremendous impact on our future as a nation. With rare insight and humanity, Dale Maharidge introduces us to the underrepresented middle ground in a debate that has long been dominated by extremists of right and left. Taking the real-life experiences of four representative Californians -- Latino, black, white, Asian -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author explores the impact of issues like immigration policy and affirmative action.
In "Someplace Like America," writer Dale Maharidge and photographer
Michael S. Williamson take us to the working-class heart of
America, bringing to life--through shoe leather reporting, memoir,
vivid stories, stunning photographs, and thoughtful analysis--the
deepening crises of poverty and homelessness. The story begins in
1980, when the authors joined forces to cover the America being
ignored by the mainstream media--people living on the margins and
losing their jobs as a result of deindustrialization. Since then,
Maharidge and Williamson have traveled more than half a million
miles to investigate the state of the working class (winning a
Pulitzer Prize in the process). In "Someplace Like America," they
follow the lives of several families over the thirty-year span to
present an intimate and devastating portrait of workers going
jobless. This brilliant and essential study--begun in the
trickle-down Reagan years and culminating with the recent banking
catastrophe--puts a human face on today's grim economic numbers. It
also illuminates the courage and resolve with which the next
generation faces the future.
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