I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author and prominent investigative journalist of our time, a heartfelt, hugely revealing memoir of a career breaking some of the most significant stories of the last half-century.

Seymour Hersh’s fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every major newspaper in the English-speaking world, honours galore, and no small amount of controversy. In this memoir he describes what drove him and how, even when working for some of the US’s most prestigious publications, he worked as an independent outsider. Here, he tels the stories behind his own groundbreaking stories as he chases leads, cultivates sources, and grapples with the weight of what he uncovers, daring to challenge official narratives handed down from the powers that be. In telling these stories, Hersh divulges previously unreported information about some of his biggest scoops, including the My Lai massacre and the horror of Abu Grahib. This is essential reading on the power of the printed word at a time when good journalism is under fire as never before.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist known for his work uncovering the My Lai massacre, the Watergate scandal and the Abu Ghraib war crimes. This memoir focuses on his career and how he broke his biggest stories but offers nothing personal, no analysis of changes in the profession or the ways anonymous sources can be used and misused. I think the book suffers for that, leaving it an okay factual read rather than an insightful one.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Despite the criticisms that have been levelled at news organisations in recent years and the many difficulties they face, journalism matters. It matters, argues Schudson, because it orients people daily in the complex and changing worlds in which they live. It matters because it offers a fact-centred, documented approach to pertinent public issues. It matters because it keeps watch on the powerful, especially those in government, and can press upon them unpleasant truths to which they must respond. Corruption is stemmed, unwise initiatives stopped, public danger averted because of what journalists do.

This book challenges journalists to think hard about what they really do. It challenges skeptical news audiences to be mindful not only of media bias but also of their own biases and how these can distort their perception. And it holds out hope that journalism will be for years to come a path for ambitious, curious young people who love words or pictures or numbers and want to use them to improve the public conversation in familiar ways or in ways yet to be imagined.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Michael Schudson is a sociologist, historian and Professor of Journalism at Columbia University. This is a well-constructed, clearly argued book that sets out what journalism should be and why it is important and I did not disagree with any of his arguments. However Schudson doesn’t really tackle news media ownership and how ownership determines editorial direction and content, thereby undermining trust in journalism and increasing skepticism.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

These are the men who stole the world.

Investigative journalist Oliver Bullough reveals the obscene dark side of globalised finance, a shadow realm of oligarchs and gangsters, unimaginable power and zero accountability. It’s a place you are unlikely to visit, but you can see its effects everywhere. Just look around.

How did we get here? In the 1950s, a small group of bankers in London had a clever idea: ‘offshore’, an imaginary zone where money could flow free. Their breakthrough created a vast reservoir of secret wealth, one that bends the laws of every nation on Earth in order to protect its masters.

Thanks to offshore, for the first time thieves could dream big. They could take everything - which is exactly what they will do, unless we stop them.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Oliver Bullough is a journalist and writer specialising in Russian history and politics. In this well-researched, easy to follow book that left me incredulous and furious, he sets out how the international finance system (facilitated by Western bankers, accountants and lawyers) permits the rich and the crooked to hide their money while still benefitting from it. It’s jaw dropping stuff that makes you realise that money conquers all.

The Blurb On The Back:

”I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America. That’s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was a drug addict, for one. A pillhead. I was also an alcoholic-in-training who guzzled warm Veuve Clicquot after work alone in my boss’s office with the door closed; a conniving and manipulative uptown doctor-shopper; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly, wildly hallucination-prone insomniac; a tweaky self-mutilator; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl; and – perhaps most of all – a lonely weirdo. But, you know, I had access to some really fantastic self-tanner.”

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Cat Marnell was the former Beauty Editor for Lucky magazine and xojane who gained a viral following for writing confessional pieces based on her life as a drug addict and her place in New York’s beauty elite. In this repetitive, glib, self-absorbed memoir that lacks any nuance or depth, Marnell sets out a broad account of the chemical highs and emotional and physical lows of her life to date that demonstrates only that a white girl born into a well-to-do family will be forgiven the most abominable emotionally abusive behaviour provided she can string a sentence together.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Would you like to eat whatever you want and still lose weight?

Who wouldn’t? Keep dreaming, imbecile.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read something that alternates between laugh-out-loud-funny and apocalyptically angry, keep holding this book. Steal it if necessary.

In his latest collection of rants, raves, hastily spluttered articles and scarcely literate scrawl, Charlie Brooker proves that there is almost nothing in this universe, big or small, that can’t reduce a human being in a state of pure blind hatred.

It won’t help you lose weight, feel smarter, sleep more soundly, or feel happier about yourself. It WILL provide you with literally hours of distraction and merriment. It can also be used to stun an intruder, if you hit him with it correctly (hint: strike hard, using the spine, on the bridge of the nose).

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

This book is a collection of Charlie Booker’s newspaper columns for The Guardian between August 2009 and July 2012 and includes his Screen Burn columns (which he stopped writing in October 2010) together with a couple of the monologues that he performed on 10 O’CLOCK LIVE. If you’re a fan of Brooker than there’s nothing in here that you won’t already be familiar with although that doesn’t make the content any less funny. If you’re not familiar with Brooker’s work then I think that the collection serves as good an introduction as any of his other collections (maybe better because it shows how he’s moved on as a writer). Given that this is a collection of columns and monologues, there is a sense of this being just money for old rope but if you’re a fan that won’t matter because this old rope is funny as hell.

The Blurb On The Back:

”I don’t get people. What’s their appeal, precisely? They waddle around with their haircuts on, cluttering the pavement like gormless, farting skittles. They’re awful.

Polite, pensive, mature, reserved ... Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Picking up where his hilarious Screen Burn left off, Dawn of the Dumb collects the best of Brooker’s recent TV writing, together with uproarious spleen-venting diatribes on a range of non-televisual subjects – tackling everything from David Cameron to human hair.

Rude, unhinged, outrageous, and above all funny, Dawn of the Dumb is essential reading for anyone with a brain and a spinal cord. And hands for turning the pages.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Bleak, misanthropic and very, very funny, this is a great introduction to Charlie Brooker’s style of writing and well worth a look. Unless your a George W Bush fan, in which case you’ll probably want to give it a miss.