Reporting on China has long been one of the most challenging and crucial of journalistic assignments. Foreign correspondents have confronted war, revolution, isolation, internal upheaval, and onerous government restrictions as well as barriers of language, culture, and politics. Nonetheless, American media coverage of China has profoundly influenced U.S. government policy and shaped public opinion not only domestically but also, given the clout and reach of U.S. news organizations, around the world. This book tells the story of how American journalists have covered China-from the civil war of the 1940s through the COVID-19 pandemic-in their own words. Mike Chinoy assembles a remarkable collection of personal accounts from eminent journalists, including Stanley Karnow, Seymour Topping, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Melinda Liu, Nicholas Kristof, Joseph Kahn, Evan Osnos, David Barboza, Amy Qin, and Megha Rajagopalan, among dozens of others. They share behind-the-scenes stories of reporting on historic moments such as Richard Nixon's groundbreaking visit in 1972, China's opening up to the outside world and its emergence as a global superpower, and the crackdowns in Tiananmen Square and Xinjiang. Journalists detail the challenges of covering a complex and secretive society and offer insight into eight decades of tumultuous political, economic, and social change. At a time of crisis in Sino-American relations, understanding the people who have covered China for the American media and how they have done so is crucial to understanding the news. Through the personal accounts of multiple generations of China correspondents, Assignment China provides that understanding.

Reporting on China has long been one of the most challenging and crucial of journalistic assignments. Foreign correspondents have confronted war, revolution, isolation, internal upheaval, and onerous government restrictions as well as barriers of language, culture, and politics. Nonetheless, American media coverage of China has profoundly influenced U.S. government policy and shaped public opinion not only domestically but also, given the clout and reach of U.S. news organizations, around the world. This book tells the story of how American journalists have covered China-from the civil war of the 1940s through the COVID-19 pandemic-in their own words. Mike Chinoy assembles a remarkable collection of personal accounts from eminent journalists, including Stanley Karnow, Seymour Topping, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Melinda Liu, Nicholas Kristof, Joseph Kahn, Evan Osnos, David Barboza, Amy Qin, and Megha Rajagopalan, among dozens of others. They share behind-the-scenes stories of reporting on historic moments such as Richard Nixon's groundbreaking visit in 1972, China's opening up to the outside world and its emergence as a global superpower, and the crackdowns in Tiananmen Square and Xinjiang. Journalists detail the challenges of covering a complex and secretive society and offer insight into eight decades of tumultuous political, economic, and social change. At a time of crisis in Sino-American relations, understanding the people who have covered China for the American media and how they have done so is crucial to understanding the news. Through the personal accounts of multiple generations of China correspondents, Assignment China provides that understanding.

Kevin Boyle (1943-2010) was one of the world's great human rights lawyers. In a career that lasted decades and spanned continents, he tackled issues ranging from freedom of the press to terrorism to minority rights. This compelling account of Kevin Boyle's life and work is a remarkable tale of how a taxi driver's son from Northern Ireland inspired the human rights movement around the world. Born in Newry in 1943, Boyle attended Queen's University Belfast in the early 1960s, beginning to teach law in 1966. He was a co-founder of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and the People's Democracy, mediated during the 1981 hunger strikes and helped forge the basis for the agreement that ended the Troubles. His ideas, endorsed in a previously unrevealed conversation Margaret Thatcher had with Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, provided much of the intellectual underpinning for the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. He was the lead lawyer in the case that decriminalized homosexuality in Northern Ireland, which then led to its decriminalization in the Irish Republic and other countries. Through a series of landmark cases at the European Court of Human Rights, he left an enduring mark on international human rights law, campaigning against apartheid in South Africa and repression in Turkey. He also played a critical role as the senior advisor to Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, during 9/11 and was involved in shaping the international response. He also led the campaign to support Salman Rushdie after the writer was targeted by Iran's ayatollahs in 1989. Kevin Boyle was central in founding human rights law centres at universities from Ireland and Britain to Brazil and Japan. Though he was a towering figure, his personal story is not well known. Now, based on years of research, thousands of documents, and scores of interviews, former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy has crafted the compelling life story of a remarkable Irishman.

When George W. Bush took office in 2001, North Korea's nuclear program was frozen and Kim Jong Il had signaled he was ready to negotiate. Today, North Korea possesses as many as ten nuclear warheads, and possibly the means to provide nuclear material to rogue states or terrorist groups. How did this happen? Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with key players in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing, including Colin Powell, John Bolton, and ex-Korean president Kim Dae-jung, as well as insights gained during fourteen trips to Pyongyang, Mike Chinoy takes readers behind the scenes of secret diplomatic meetings, disputed intelligence reports, and Washington turf battles as well as inside the mysterious world of North Korea. Meltdown provides a wealth of new material about a previously opaque series of events that eventually led the Bush administration to abandon confrontation and pursue negotiations, and explains how the diplomatic process collapsed and produced the crisis the Obama administration confronts today.