(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates) In response to Ta-Nehisi’s introductory post yesterday, a treasured commenter brought up the idea of doing a non-fiction recommendation thread this week. As fate would have it, I’ve long been planning to use this space to champion a few of my favorite off-the-radar non-fiction gems. Let me now start doing so [...]
Entries Tagged as 'journalism'
“You’ll Talk About Him Forever”
March 19th, 2010 · 7 Comments
In reading about Universal’s decision to nix P.T. Anderson’s The Master, a movie obviously inspired by the founding of Scientology, we found ourselves heartily agreeing with several of The A.V. Club‘s commenters: Perhaps what the world needs isn’t a flick about L. Ron Hubbard’s quasi-religious scam, but a Hollywood-style biopic about the even more fascinating [...]
What Young Men Still Do
December 30th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Headhunting of the literal sort figures quite prominently in Now the Hell Will Start, our 386-page labor o’ love. We dedicated an entire chapter to the practice, and thus field frequent questions from readers regarding whether or not the tribal inhabitants of North-East India and northwest Burma still take skulls. Our stock answer is that [...]
Tags:anthropology·Assam·Borneo·crime·Dayaks·headhunting·India·Indonesia·journalism·Madurese
Twenty Years
August 31st, 2009 · 2 Comments
It’s been ages since we’ve discussed Sri Lanka, one of our pet topics dating back to this blog’s earliest days. And so it pains us to revisit the island nation under such disturbing circumstances—namely, today’s news that Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating the sweeping Prevention of [...]
Tags:human rights·J.S. Tissainayagam·journalism·Sri Lanka·Tamil Tigers
Coup Four and a Half
June 26th, 2009 · No Comments
In April, Fiji’s government declared a public emergency that has led to total media censorship, a ban on political meetings, and the sacking of judges. It’s increasingly clear that Commodore Frank Bainimarama, Fiji’s prime minister, intends for martial law to become permanent. Fortunately, journalists are routing around the emergency rules on Coup Four and a [...]
Citizen Journalism in Sri Lanka
May 21st, 2009 · 2 Comments
The Sri Lankan government is sadly adept at squelching journalism, which makes the crowdsourced Groundviews a truly precious gem. Proudly calling itself “Sri Lanka’s first and only citizens journalism website,” Groundviews provides a rare English-language peek at the mood on Colombo’s streets. The site has been in peak form as the nation’s civil war has [...]
The Lipstick of Dictatorship
February 25th, 2009 · No Comments
The happy gentleman to the right is José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola’s president for the past 30 years. During that time, he has allegedly managed to skim $4 billion from the nation’s oil revenues—quite a despicable feat, given that Angola remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with 70 percent of the population living on [...]
Tags:Angola·corruption·journalism
“Gambling, Golf, and Gangsters”
February 23rd, 2009 · No Comments
An excellent New York Times piece on the murder of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey is today’s must-read, at least if you (like me) are something of a journalism geek. The article’s one flaw is an all-too-brief namecheck of The Arizona Project, a multi-paper investigation into the 1976 assassination (via car bomb) of Arizona Republic [...]
Tags:Arizona·crime·journalism
