New Books in Journalism

In February 2002, British journalist James Brabazon set out to travel with guerrilla forces into Liberia to show the world what was happening in that war-torn country. To protect him, he hired Nick du Toit, a former South African Defence Force soldier who had fought in conflicts across Africa for over three decades. What follows is an incredible behind-the-scenes account of the Liberian rebels known as the LURD as they attempt to seize control of the country from government troops led by President Charles Taylor. In this gripping narrative, James Brabazon paints a brilliant portrait of the chaos that tore West Africa apart: nations run by warlords and kleptocrats, rebels fighting to displace them, ordinary people caught in the crossfire and everywhere adventurers and mercenaries operating in war’s dark shadows. It is a brutally honest book about what it takes to be a journalist, survivor, and friend in this morally corrosive crucible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

We like to think of countries as permanent fixtures. They aren’t. They come and go. In 1989, a place called the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East Germany, was going. It was never really an “ordinary” place. In the West but also the East; sovereign but not sovereign; German but not German; poor but rich. I could go on. It was the unnatural product of the Cold War, so when the Cold War ended it ended as well. But it didn’t just blink out of existence. Not at all. For a brief period–roughly from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989 to formal reunification in October, 1990–it continued to exist, a country that was alive and dead. Reporter Stevan Allen was lucky enough to be there and he has written an artful book about it–Roaming Ghostland: The Final Days of East Germany. At its center is a wonderful literary device: just as East Germany was passing out of existence, so too was an important phase in Allen’s life. The two narratives–that of the “Ossies” and the young journalist–move together, intermingle, and sometimes do battle as Allen tries to get the story and to figure out what he is doing with his life. One of the terrific things about the book is that you get to see the trials of foreign reporting–and its toll on foreign correspondents–from the street itself. Allen pulls no punchs regarding himself or his subjects. He often fails as do they. Sometimes he gets the story, sometimes he doesn’t; sometimes the East Germans help him, sometimes they don’t. This is not a self-congratulatory tale of unending triumph; it’s the story of a man at work, a man living life, a man struggling with himself and his task. Part personal memoir, part coming-of-age story, part hard-nosed reporting, and part elegy to a youth past, Roaming Ghostland: The Final Days of East Germany will be a welcome treat for journalists, historians, and anyone interested in a good read about places and pasts that no longer exist, save in memory. If you know a young person who is interested in a career as a journalist, this book would make a terrific gift. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

The modern newspaper is not as old as you think. Until the early nineteenth century, they were thin and expensive. It was only with the advent of the penny press circa 1830 that the truly mass broadsheet was born. Yet selling a paper for a cent was not a straight-forward business proposition. In order to turn a profit, you needed to sell a lot of copy. You won’t be surprised to learn that the best way to move papers was to give the people what they wanted–scandal, outrage, marvels, miracles and outright inventions. In The Sun and the Moon. The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (Basic Books, 2008) shows how the early masters of the trade invented the modern paper by telling the public that the moon was inhabited by the recognizable ancestors of “Bat Boy.” Goodman marches a gallery of rogues across the book’s pages–an astronomer with an over-active imagination, an editor with an invented past, a horde of street urchins hawking papers and eating oysters. P.T. Barnum and Edger Allan Poe make appearances! This is a terrifically entertaining book, popular history at its best. And, of course, it’s ALL TRUE! Now put down The Weekly World News and go buy The Sun and the Moon! Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Every so often I read a book that reminds me that things weren’t at all what they appear to have been in hindsight. James Zug‘s wonderfully written The Guardian: The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper (Michigan State UP, 2007) is one such book. For years I studied and wrote about Russia and the Soviet Union. In that time, I came to think of communists as at best horribly misguided and at worst positively malevolent. Zug reminded me that in fact communists were on the right side of many issues that I hold dear. One of them, and the focus of The Guardian, was racism generally and Apartheid in particular. With a novelist’s skill, Zug chronicles the activities of a remarkably brave group of South African leftists, fellow-travelers, and Party members who, through the pages of their newspaper and with their very lives, fought racism in South Africa when so many ‘right-thinking people’ stood by in silence. He doesn’t sugar-coat the story, and never fails to point out when The Guardian‘s editors and writers were on the wrong side of an issue. But Zug saves them from being written out of history all together by broad-brushed dismissals of mid-century communism. Not only that, he tells a ripping tale. Please read this book. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Today we talked with Eric Gardner, who is chair and professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. The interview focuses on Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), a new book which Dr. Gardner both authored an introduction to and edited. This is the first collection from an African American journalist writing for the San Francisco based newspaper, the Elevator. Gardner’s introduction does an excellent job of placing Carter into both the context of the history and literature of the American West. Dr. Gardner is also the editor of Major Voices: The Drama of Slavery and has authored works which appear in the African American Review, the African American National Biography, and Legacy. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism