Home › Resources › Let's Talk: Personal Boundaries, Safety & Women in Journalism
Let's Talk: Personal Boundaries, Safety & Women in Journalism
December 6, 2017
JUDITH MATLOFF, JOURNALIST & MEDIA SAFETY INSTRUCTOR
Ann Cooper: I was looking up some articles you wrote about this for CJR years ago. This was pre-Lara Logan and pre-Lynsey Addario. I think one of the things that you said then or perhaps later was this is going to continue to be under-reported until we remove the stigma. Do we still have a stigma?
Judith Matloff: We still have a stigma. I do safety training and about 75% of my trainees are women. When we get to the sexual assault prevention section I'm always staggered by the number of women who have not reported to their employers. It’s really hard. Likewise, it's hard for men to report. In some ways it's harder for men, but obviously numerically there are more women than men who experience harassment or assault.
Ann Cooper: When you’re doing a training session is that a safer space?
Judith Matloff: Yeah. When I do training session it's definitely a safer space so that people will talk. The sexual assault segment comes at the end of a four day course, so there's been a lot of bonding and trust built up at that point. As a professor, I also get emails from people or phone calls from people in the field, former students, all the time about situations they are in and they ask for advice about how to navigate it. Anecdotally, I think it's happening quite a lot.
Ann Cooper: What are some of the stories that come up? Are there certain trends?
Judith Matloff: There are probably three trends. There is the typical story of working with a supervisor who’s harassing you. Things are more advanced here in America than in a lot of other countries due to reporting culture. Here there are Human Resources Departments. In many other countries in the world that isn't there. here was one French woman working with in a major television station, and there was no reporting mechanism. Her boss was harassing her horrifically, but she just had to put up with it. That's one thing, harassment from a supervisor and I could give some specific anecdotes in a minute.
Then another thing is harassment from sources, or assault from sources, and that's in some ways a trickier one to maneuver because you can't report and go to the Human Resources Department, or go to another supervisor. Reporters have to invest trust in their sources, and if they suddenly start putting pressure on you how do you navigate it?
A lot of what we do in the training is help people navigate the boundaries, and seeing the signs from the very beginning. This gets to the third pattern, which usually starts very subtly so you're not quite sure where the guy is going with this, and you put up with it. Then it begins to escalate. Part of what we do in the training is to try and orient people to spot the signs at the beginning, and try to shut it down at that point, while maintaining the professional relationship, which is not always possible.
Ann Cooper: In terms of harassment by supervisors, I mean, when you start talking about this in a training session do you find that some women are like, "Oh, I didn't even realize?"
Judith Matloff: Yes. I can give an example from my own career. Now I'm an old hag and I don't get this stuff anymore, or I get it very very rarely, but when I was younger I was very vulnerable because I was was in my early 20s and I was junior. I also was less assertive than I am now. I'll give you an example.
I had a supervisor who would comment on what I was wearing and then suddenly the buttons seemed skewed to him and he would say, "Let me fix your dress in the back." Then the questions about my boyfriend started getting more and more personal, and then he would reveal things about himself. It seemed sort of innocuous, but it made me a little uncomfortable. I didn't like when he touched me, but he didn't touch me in any weird way, it was my hair, or again, the button, or a brush on the shoulder. It wasn't anything that I could say, "Oh, my God, this is harassment."
Then it escalated, and the way it escalated got bad. This is another thing we talk about in training, that women have to try to avoid situations where they can't escape. I don't want people to get paranoid, but you have to think of any source or supervisor as a potential rapist.
What happened with this particular boss was we went on assignment together. I wasn't quite sure why I was there, because there really wasn't much to do, but whatever. The assignment ended and we had a long drive back to the city where our office was based, and he took a circuitous route. We stopped at an isolated, very beautiful, scenic hotel, and he said, "Let's have lunch." I said, "Okay." We had lunch and he kept encouraging me to drink, and again, I just didn't feel right about it so I said, "No. I don't want anything to drink." Then he asked me if I was tired and I said, "It was a long trip and I'm kind of eager to get back home." He said, "Well, we can just get a room and go upstairs." I said, "I really want to get back."
Meanwhile, I'm thinking “How do I handle this?” I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere at this hotel with my boss. I felt quite agitated so I went into the lady's room to try to think about what to do, and I heard footsteps. He followed me into the lady's room into the next stall and starts talking to me. I left the lady's room and I didn't know what to do. At that point I sat at the table and we didn't talk, and there's a limit to how long you can sit at a table not talking with your boss. He finally realized nothing was going to happen and we sat in the car, there was no conversation. After that he made my life miserable.
Ann Cooper: How?
Judith Matloff: Just nasty, everything I did was wrong. Fortunately we did have a reporting mechanism at the organization I worked for so as soon I got back on base I reported what had happened. Even though it was a foreign posting, home office had to know what had happened.
Ann Cooper: What did the home office do?
Judith Matloff: Nothing. This was in the '80s. Did they confront him? No, but they were well-aware of the fact that this was probably not going to be helping my evaluation and whatnot. Whatever he wrote they sort of dismissed and my work was taken on merit.
Would this happen today in America? I would hope not. I don't think so, but the situation that I got into often times happens to women pre-assault or pre major harassment, which is they are brought to an area where they are isolated with the person, and there is no escape.
I hear this all the time. "I was in a car with the source and he was taking me to the site of a massacre," or, "He was going to take me to the factory to show me whatever," or, "We were going to look at the scene of hurricane," or whatever. They're alone with a source in a car going to a fairly isolated place. The only advice I can give to young women, or any women, is don't go alone. Bring a colleague, bring a photographer.
I'm not blaming the victim, but when I heard about the submarine I could only imagine what happened. You can't get off a submarine under the sea. Let that be a cautionary tale, don't go into submarines alone with men. Even if they are public figures who have taken journalists in the past. As a safety mechanism women should try whenever possible to avoid going alone off site like that. When you're in an office you can just get out of an office. That's not where most of the assaults and the really severe harassment take place, it happens when they're isolated.
Ann Cooper: Well, I'm sure this is part of the training that you do, but you published a list of tips, and one of them is about, "Always stay on the edge of crowds. Deploy an idling car nearby for a quick getaway. Always plot an escape route." That's just what you've been talking about.
Judith Matloff: I didn't have an escape route when I went on assignment with my boss. I suppose I could have gone to the desk of the hotel and said, "Call me a taxi," but we were five hours away from where we were supposed to be. What was going through my mind, this is something I hear from women all the time, was “What are the repercussions going to be?” I have to somehow stay neutral without pissing him off too much, without him feeling rebuffed, but how can you help but rebuff the person if you don't want to go to the hotel room with them?
Ann Cooper: Right. When you're hearing these stories from students, or whoever, in the training classes are most of them about workplace harassment? Are most of them about being harassed by sources?
Judith Matloff: It's 50/50. The actual physical assaults will be by sources, or fixers, or translators. It's very unusual for an editor to rape a reporter, but the level of harassment and insinuation and pressure would obviously be fairly high. In the field it's more a direct kind of thing. For instance, very recently I got a really freaked out phone call from a former student who was on assignment. She was a freelancer at that point, and she was assigned to go with a correspondent. He started coming on to her and telling her how beautiful she was and wanted to sleep with her, and blah, blah, blah, and they still had another month of reporting ahead of them. She said, "What do I do? What do I do?"
What we worked out together, and it eventually was successful, was she wrote him a very neutral email, because emails can always be forwarded. She wrote an email saying, "Dear, John, I really respect your work, and I really believe in this project we're working on, but I felt very uncomfortable about what you said last night. I want this to be as productive a trip as possible. If we can just keep our future conversations purely professional so that I can do the best work possible. I just want to stress again, I really respect you." What's he going to do after that? He's going to persist? It's in writing, she can forward it, he knows she can forward it, and he backed off at that point.
Ann Cooper: Okay. An email can be a tool. There's an implicit, not technically a threat, but this could be seen by others.
Judith Matloff: Yeah, so yay, email. The other thing is to shut things down if you have that uh-oh feeling in your stomach that it doesn't feel right. I'll give an example. I don't really get harassment these days, but there was a source who was acting inappropriately and this is somebody I was negotiating a contract with so I wanted his money for a project I was working on. He has the position of power, and these things are often times about power.
I flew to his town, we were going to talk about going to some negotiations and he kept saying we had to meet to talk about the agenda for the meeting the next day with the real funders, and he kept saying that he wanted to go out drinking with me. I didn't see the point of that, plus I go to bed at 9:00 at night. I didn't see why he kept insisting, I'm not going to name the drink because that would locate him geographically, but he kept on insisting on a certain drink.
Part of me is thinking, "Okay, maybe it's just hey, I want to show somebody around my town, and we all drink this," but it just didn't seem appropriate. What I did was I followed my advice to other people, which I don't always do, which is I gave him alternatives. I said, "I'm really sorry, I can't go out tonight. I have a deadline I have to work on. However, we can meet at this time, this time, this time." It's a way to negotiate the situation. I don't feel comfortable with the terms you're setting, I am now setting terms.
In that message I also made clear that I would pay, because I also wanted to make clear that I had to be in a position of power. It worked, I didn't get the money for the contact, but it wasn't related to that, I don't think. Was this guy coming onto me? Probably not. He's young enough to be my kid, but I just didn't feel it was professional. That kind of thing can escalate, you go out for a drink with the guy, and then he gets the wrong idea, or everybody gets drunk, and your defenses are down. It's just better if you feel somebody isn’t being totally professional just stop it right there before it could escalate. That would be my advice to people, just make it really clear.
Ann Cooper: Okay. You were saying there's the supervisor problem, there's the source problem, likely the source of real violence or rape is with sources. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about some your own experiences, or some of the things you are hearing from the students you're training, or from former students.
Judith Matloff: Nearly all the rape cases I heard about, or assault, were with people they knew. It was a fixer, it was a source, it was a driver. It's virtually never random. One really vulnerable place is going down in a submarine, one vulnerable place is a car and somebody is driving you. You need to be really careful with taxi drivers, or a designated driver you've been hiring for a while.
One thing to always stress, again, if it's somebody you're hiring is that you're in control and you are paying them. Is it going to stop them from raping you? Maybe, maybe not, but always assert your authority, the little authority that you might have. If it's somebody whom you're hiring and they're coming on inappropriately, and if it's somebody you hire you can just say to them, "I don't really like the way you're talking to me, and I'm paying you so stop it." It's a little bit harder with a source because you want something from them.
I'll give you an example of something that happened to me. I'm in Burundi, and there's a curfew, and the military spokesmen, I don't remember his name, some colonel. He was a sleazebag. He kept saying, "Oh, Judith, we must have dinner, we must have dinner," and I said, "Well, look, the hotel here has a really nice restaurant in the lobby," you know where there are one million people, "So let's have dinner here and I will treat you." He goes, "No, there's this amazing French restaurant. I want to take you there, because you're my favorite journalist," which I'm sure I wasn't. I said, "Wait a minute there's a curfew." "No problem. I'm in charge here because I'm the colonel. No problem, I can get us through the road blocks." I'm thinking road blocks? We're going to go through road blocks and have dinner? How is this French restaurant open?” I said, "How is this French restaurant open," "They're opening it just for us."
Obviously I don't feel really good about this. Again, there was this negotiation and I said, "Well, I have to be back at the hotel," we didn't have cell phones in those days so I was like, "In case my editor calls." He said, "No, no, I'll talk to your editor." That's a kind of an absurd case, but there was no way in hell I was going in that guy’s car for dinner after curfew. I burnt the source. He didn't want to talk to me the next day so I lost my source.
If If we had been where my office was based, I would have gone to my boss and said, "Look, this guy is being a real pain in the neck. Put a guy on this story." But you know what it's like, you're a correspondent, you're out in the field, you're alone in a war-torn city, you can't call back to the head office and say, "Can you send somebody else out to Burundi?" That's a pretty typical-type situation.
Women have another problem, which is we're socially conditioned to please people. I think we sometimes don't work on our instincts. This doesn't really feel right, but I don't want to insult him because I don't want to be the ugly white women from America. There's a certain dynamic that can come into play there, and I think we just have to remind ourselves that we have a right to be really, really assertive.
Ann Cooper: Well, there's also that power thing that women correspondents have talked about. If I refuse to take an assignment then what are they going to think of me, and what's that going to do to my career?
Judith Matloff: I think that's one reason why people don't report rape. There was one woman I knew, a friend of mine, who went through incredible lengths not to tell her editors, but she had to get Antiretrovirals. She had to get that day after pill so she flew to another country, but she didn't tell her boss, and she flew back the same day. These contortions that she went through, but she just didn't want them to know.
Your relationship with your boss is not always intimate. Then if you tell people everybody in the newsroom is looking at you in that vulnerable way, and I would imagine it's very, very awkward. But I do encourage women to follow Lara Logan's example and come out. She came out and she said what had to be said, and she was able to get the help and the support that she needed.
Ann Cooper: We've had a few very high profile, Lara Logan, Lynsey Addario saying it was an attack. Women who have come out and said, "I'm going to talk about this publicly." In fact, Lynsey Addario said, "I wanted to talk about this because I wanted to shame the Libyan men who were groping me. I figured that many other men in that society would be deeply offended by it, and ashamed," and she said they were. She heard from fixers and translators and lots of other people, " That's not how we are. I am so sorry this happened to you," and that sort of thing. If you go back and you read about that you almost feel like, well, maybe that was a watershed. It doesn't sound like it was necessarily, I don't know.
Judith Matloff: I think it's better than it was when I wrote that article, which was what? 2007-2005.
Ann Cooper: 2007.
Judith Matloff: Okay, so 10 years ago. I think it is better in some countries. After Lara Logan came forth there were four other female journalists who had experienced almost identical assaults, the same pattern of assault in Tahrir Square and they came out. I don't know if they would have if she hadn't come out first. I do think it's better. I also think newsrooms are more sensitive in the United States and Britain. I think people are talking about it a little bit more.
What worries me most are my former students who are freelancers. because they're out on their own in these places. It's so hard to get assignments and sell your stuff. They don't have the institutional support that could provide free counseling, or could provide the medication, or could even do a forensic investigation into what happened and try to get some justice. They don't have those resources and they're really vulnerable.
I can't stress enough, like that thing with my boss in 1984, which was a long time ago, I would react to it very differently as a 60-year-old woman, because I'm coming from a different place mentally and socially and societally. When you're a young woman and you're in your early 20s and you're starting out in your career, you're unsure of yourself and you're vulnerable. You're also more likely to be targeted, just precisely for those reasons, because you are so vulnerable.
I do hope the discussion is being had in newsrooms with younger women. And this doesn't just happen abroad. It happens domestically. Somebody just approached me about doing training with investigative journalists, and apparently a lot of the women are facing problems getting into people's cars, being alone when they report. This is stuff in rural America, where they're getting harassed by sources.
Ann Cooper: When you're doing the training is this part of a larger security training?
Judith Matloff: Yeah. We have a women, who is a rape survivor, who takes people through very basic physical moves, to flick a hand away or stick your fingers in somebody else's eyes, but the most critical thing is the psychological, emotional, verbal negotiations at the beginning to set the boundaries.
I really do think it helps to set boundaries really early on: "I'm not going to drink those drinks with you, let's meet for breakfast in the hotel lobby." That type of thing is really critical. Teach people that they can provide the harasser an alternative whenever possible. Like I don't like your terms, I'm going to set new terms. That's really critical, and that's more of a psychological leap than “I'm going to get you in the jugular.”
Ann Cooper: What's the worst thing, or the worst question, or situation you have every been asked by a former student?
Judith Matloff: Related to sexual harassment?
Ann Cooper: Yeah.
Judith Matloff: I'm trying to think of the worst. This one woman called me, she was in a remote area, really remote, rural area of the former Soviet Union. She was staying in somebody's house, and the house was in the middle of nowhere. She wakes up, she feels something in her face and it's a penis. It's the penis of the owner of the house so she screams and she runs out of the room, and then the wife says something to the effect of, "Well, you're just a slut and just give him what he wants." It was such a nightmare. You'd hope at least the wife would be on your side, but she was not very sympathetic, or maybe she blamed the young woman for what happened.
I can't imagine a worse situation. You're stuck in somebody's house, it's late at night, who are you going to call? They're outside cell range. That's pretty disgusting, that's awful. She stayed until daylight, and then she just decided she had to get out of there. That was the end of that. She didn't complete the project, and she was really freaked out afterward. She called me. She was so freaked out she wet herself right on the spot, which also hopefully made her seem more repulsive to this guy.
Then that was pretty bad. Then I heard of an incident where a woman went to a police station, she was investigating a crime. She should have had somebody with her, and she was gang raped by all the police in the station.
Ann Cooper: Where was that?
Judith Matloff: That was in Russia, Siberia. That was not a former student. That was a colleague. That was really grim. That's kind of like going down in the submarine. That's the sort of story that I'd advise that you have somebody, preferably male, with you, even if he's not doing anything, just holding a Polaroid camera. That was horrid. She was gang raped. I think those were the two worst cases.
Ann Cooper: These tips that were also published in CJR, I just want to ask you about a couple of them. I'm wondering, this is probably part of the training program, "Dress like a frump. Wear a thick belt, laced boots, loose pants, and a pullover shirt slows down attackers."
Judith Matloff: Yeah, that would be in a crowd. If you're in an office situation I don't think it’s going to help.
Ann Cooper: Do you get any pushback?
Judith Matloff: If you're in a crowd what do you care what you look like, right? If you're doing a crowd reporting thing you're probably wearing something against tear gas, that was more of the crowd attack Lara Logan type situation.
Ann Cooper: Okay. “If surrounded at close quarters fight with everything you've got.”
Judith Matloff: At that point, yeah. You shouldn't be in a situation where you're surrounded at all corners. You want to avoid getting into that situation at all.
Ann Cooper: Under harassment you say make clear that you will not tolerate inappropriate touching, or comments from support staff sources, or colleagues. You've talked a lot about that kind of negotiating. Like steer away from this situation that they want to get in, but this is more direct.
Judith Matloff: When we do the training, this is where the woman trainer comes in. She has these two sleazy co-trainers. They're actors, they play creepy, sleazy men. They're actually lovely, delightful men. They're like, "Hey, hey." (Matloff gestures pawing). She'll put the women through the exercise of taking the hand and putting it away. Now that seems so unnatural, but simply by virtue of being unnatural the guy is like, "Wait a minute, she took my hand off her breast." Do that. Step back, say to the person, "I don't feel comfortable," just say it neutrally, politely, "I don't feel comfortable about you putting your hand there, please take your hand away."
Ann Cooper: That sort of standing up to this power thing.
Judith Matloff: Yeah. It's like get your hand off. Ick.
Ann Cooper: It surprises them and maybe even humiliates them to have their hand there.
Judith Matloff: Yeah. It's a very unnatural gesture. Somebody puts his hand on your shoulder and you take the hand off. It's not normal, people don't do that, and it breaks the momentum. You want to break the momentum so that they're startled. It's like what they teach you in counter surveillance, when you're being followed a very effective technique often times is you look the person in the eye and you say, "Can I help you," because they don't expect you to react like that, or when you get a threat on the phone you actually engage them. They don't expect you to do that. It breaks the momentum, it throws them off guard. Same principle.
Ann Cooper: I wonder what Trump would have done if Hilary had done that in the debate. Anyway. Moving right along, yes, rape. "Soil yourself with vomit, feces, or urine."
Judith Matloff: Yeah, it's hard to defecate on command, but you might be scared enough, you're pretty repulsive when that happens, or start screaming like an idiot, or pretend you're having a convulsion. It may not work, but it might slow them down. Try it.
Ann Cooper: "Say you are HIV positive, menstruating, or pregnant."
Judith Matloff: That has worked in some cultures with some women I know. If he ends up saying , "I don't care," and pulls out a condom, but at least he's using a condom so you're not getting the HIV from him. Wedding ring.
Ann Cooper: Wedding ring, yeah.
Judith Matloff: Does it stop anything? I don't know, but it's just like one more barrier. If I feel a source is getting a little bit too, yech, I spend a lot of time talking about my husband. I spend a lot of time talking about my kid. Does it stop them? I don't know, but subliminally it's sending a message. I don't think it's going to save you from rape, but I think it just adds another layer of respectability, or maybe unattainability.
Ann Cooper: What’s the deodorant spray trick?
Judith Matloff: It works temporarily like Mace, but it's legal. Bear spray is very good, too. Keep it by the bed. A couple instances I heard in Iraq and Afghanistan women would wake up and there would be men on top of them in their hotel room. Well, if you could just reach over and get that bear spray, or that deodorant spray and spray it in their face you're going to blind them temporarily, and you can hopefully elbow your way out of the situation.
What I recommend for anyone working in a dangerous place is one of those door alarms. They emit the most God awful noise, nobody is going to want to put up with that just to rape you. They will run away. It will alert everybody in the hotel. You put it on your door knob so if somebody moves the door knob the alarm goes off, or you can put it at the doorjamb, under the door so if they try to force the door this crazy noise explodes. It's awful, but better be deafened than raped.
Ann Cooper: Okay.
Judith Matloff: I think one point I want to make is that, and I think this is a particularLy critical when you're dealing with sources, you don't really, really know who they are and it's hard to fully trust them. They may seem like decent people, but I think that phrase, "Every man is a potential rapist," it should be in rotation in your head. It's not that women are inviting these attacks. Look how common rape is in society anyway. Why would it be any different just because we're journalists? It's a societal problem that maybe it gets intensified due to the nature of our proximity with these strangers, or proximity with people that we work with. I think women have to be aware of the fact that we live in a world where women get raped, and we are often times in situations that make us particularly vulnerable to it.
Don't give them the benefit of the doubt. I think that's my lesson to women, if it's feeling somewhat uncomfortable, and you're not sure whether you're reading it wrong, just assume you're reading it right, and try to shut it down at that point. Don't give them the benefit of the doubt, because it could escalate.
Ann Cooper: How do you define sexual harassment?
Judith Matloff: I would define sexual harassment as any unwanted, unwelcomed, and unsolicited advance. That could be verbal, that could be physical, of a sexual nature. Even somebody commenting on your body and saying, "Wow, you look really fit," as a boss of mine used to. I felt that was harassment, because it wasn't his job to talk about my physique, or when he would ask me who I was sleeping with, like he would say, "What's the bed situation Matloff?" That was an unwanted question of a sexual nature, even if he himself was not coming onto me. We consider that harassment. Inappropriate touching is clearly, clearly.
I'll give you another one, which is kind of borderline. I was talking to a source and he kept putting his hand on my shoulder, so not anything intimate, and leaning in too close. Then I would back up, and sort of wiggle away from his hand. Then after about 15 minutes we did the whole interview of me walking backwards and we walked around the room. I would consider that sexual harassment. Maybe it was just physical harassment, but it felt sexual. He was just leaning in too close, and what right did he have to touch me? Even if it was just my shoulder.
This documentary, available online and on DVD, features a wide range of Australian journalists their recounting experiences covering traumatic stories.
Whether clinicians like it or not, children and families affected by trauma are routinely covered by the media. When that happens, clinicians often face difficult choices.
In conjunction with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dart Centre Asia Pacific created a teaching video on the treatment of news sources. The project was developed to supplement teaching materials for journalism educators.
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Integrating clinical and social perspective without sacrificing either the complexity of individual experience or the breadth of political context, "Trauma and Recovery" brings a new level of understanding to the psychological consequences of the full range of traumatic life events.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jonathan Shay is a Boston based psychiatrist caring for Vietnam combat veterans diagnosed with severe, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. In this unique and revolutionary book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with many of his patients, Vietnam veterans struggling with PTSD . Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago, so much can be learned about combat trauma, especially when it is threaded through the compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.
Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War
War journalists, like all who have prolonged exposure to violence, come home emotionally maimed and often broken. And yet, a news culture in denial has pretended that war journalists are immune from trauma. This fit into the macho culture of war journalism. It also assuaged the consciences of those running news organizations, who often crumple up and discard, years later, those they send to war. Dr. Feinstein has provided us with research that is a chilling reminder that war journalists are human, as well as a searing indictment of major news conglomerates who have refused to acknowledge or address the suffering of their own.
PTSD and Veterans: A Conversation with Dr. Frank Ochberg
How do we help veterans who are returning from war with PTSD? Dr. Frank Ochberg, a leading authority on PTSD, shares his experiences, seasoned insights and suggestions in this intimate conversation with reporter Mike Walters. He shares his insights regarding common symptoms to look out for and the importance of building trust and other aspects of the patient-therapist relationship. He then explains techniques he has developed that help his clients work through the trauma and adapt to civilian life.
Mapping Trauma and Its Wake: Autobiographic Essays by Pioneer Trauma Scholars
Mapping Trauma and Its Wake is a compilation of autobiographic essays by seventeen of the field's pioneers, each of whom has been recognized for his or her contributions by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Each author discusses how he or she first got interested in the field, what each feels are his or her greatest achievements, and where the discipline might - and should - go from here. This impressive collection of essays by internationally-renowned specialists is destined to become a classic of traumatology literature. It is a text that will provide future mental health professionals with a window into the early years of this rapidly expanding field.
Post-Traumatic Therapy And Victims Of Violence (Psychosocial Stress Series)
Frank M. Ochberg, MD is adjunct professor of psychiatry, criminal justice and journalism at Michigan State University. He served in the cabinet of Governor William Milliken as Mental Health Director. His book, Post Traumatic Therapy and Victims of Violence, is widely acclaimed as one of the leading resources in the field.
In this long-awaited memoir, Lifton charts the adventurous and surprising course of his fascinating life journey, one that took him from what he refers to as, "a Jewish Huck Finn childhood in Brooklyn, to deep and meaningful friendships with many of the most influential intellectuals, writers, and artists of our time—from Erik Erikson, David Riesman, and Margaret Mead, to Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley Kunitz, Kenzaburo Oe, and Norman Mailer.
This work is more than a memoir, it is also a remarkable study of Hiroshima survivors. Lifton explored the human consequences of nuclear weapons, and then went on to uncover dangerous forms of attraction to their power in the spiritual disease he calls nuclearism. Lifton writing illuminates the reversal of healing and killing in ordinary physicians who had been socialized to Nazi evil. Written with the warmth of spirit—along with the humor and sense of absurdity—that have made Lifton a beloved friend and teacher to so many, Witness to an Extreme Century is a moving and deeply thought-provoking story of one man’s extraordinary commitment to looking into the abyss of evil in order to help others move past it.
Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming
In this original psychological literary work, Dr. Jonathan Shay continues what he started in his book, Achilles in Vietnam. Uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, Shay sheds light on the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road to recovery, the return to civilian life. The combination of psychological insight and literary brilliance feels seamless. Shay makes an impassioned plea to renovate American military institutions and in doing so deepens the readers understanding of the veteran's experience.
Trauma Journalism personalizes this movement with in-depth profiles of reporters, researchers and trauma experts engaged in an international effort to transform how the media work under the most difficult of conditions.Through biographical sketches concerning several significant traumatic events (Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine school tragedy, 9/11, Iraq War, the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina), students and working reporters will gain insights into the critical components of contemporary journalism practices.
After the War Zone: A Practical Guide for Returning Troops and Their Families
Two experts from the VA National Center for PTSD come together in this work to provide an essential resource for service members, their spouses, families, and communities. They shed light on what troops really experience during deployment and once they return home. Pinpointing the most common after-effects of war and offering strategies for troop reintegration to daily life, Friedman and Slone cover the myths and realities of homecoming; reconnecting with spouse and family; anger and adrenaline; guilt and moral dilemmas; and PTSD and other mental-health concerns. With a wealth of community and government resources, tips, and suggestions, After the War Zone is a practical guide to helping troops and their families prevent war zone stresses from having a lasting negative impact.
Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges
Experiencing trauma at some point in life is almost inevitable, overcoming it is not. This inspiring book identifies ten key ways to weather and bounce back from stress and trauma. Steven M. Southwick incorporates the latest scientific research and interviews with trauma survivors. This book provides a practical guide to building emotional, mental and physical resilience after trauma.
Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice
This book examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context. Chapter authors emphasize basic therapeutic skills such as empathic listening, instilling resilience, and creating meaning, in the service of empirically-supported, highly efficacious trauma interventions. Throughout, they focus on the real-life challenges that arise in typical therapy sessions to deepen our understanding and application of evidence based interventions.
While this book is intended for all clinical mental health professionals who work with trauma survivors it is also a phenomenal resource for those who seek to broaden their understanding of the way various approaches to understanding treatment of trauma.
The award-winning author and noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton offers a powerful critique of American militarism during the Vietnam War. Home from the War is recognized as the ultimate text for those working with Vietnam veterans, the book's insights have had enormous influence among psychologists and psychiatrists all over the world.
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
The Boston Globe called this book, "A powerful reminder not only of what happened, but of the monumental evil done by the particular human beings who were trained to heal and cure."
Based on arresting historical scholarship and personal interviews with Nazi and prisoner doctors, the book traces the inexorable logic leading from early Nazi sterilization and euthanasia of its own citizens to mass extermination of "racial undesirables."This extraordinary work combines research and analyzation to describe a seemingly contradictory phenomenon of doctors becoming agents of mass murder. With chilling literary power, Lifton describes the Nazi transmutation of values that allowed medical killing to be seen as a therapeutic healing of the body politic.
When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.
Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims & Trauma
More essential now than ever, Covering Violence connects journalistic practices to the rapidly expanding body of literature on trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and secondary traumatic stress, and pays close attention to current medical and political debates concerning victims' rights.
Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills is a story that points to a crisis facing international institutions and the media who seek to alleviate and report human suffering throughout the world. The goals of the editor are to tell the story of thousands of individuals dedicated to helping others; and to integrate issues of protection and care into all levels of planning, implementing and evaluating international intervention and action. The book identifies approaches that have proven useful and explores and suggests future directions.
The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence
Ervin Staub explores the psychological, cultural, and societal roots of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another: cultural and social patterns predisposing to violence, historical circumstances resulting in persistent life problems, and needs and modes of adaptation arising from the interaction of these influences.
Drawing on more than 30 years of criminal justice experience, author Susan Herman explains why justice for all requires more than holding offenders accountable it means addressing victims three basic needs: to be safe, to recover from the trauma of the crime, and regain control of their lives.
Arnold Isaacs, who spent the final years of the war in Vietnam as a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, describes his firsthand observations of the collapse of Cambodia and South Vietnam―from the 1973 Paris peace agreement to the American evacuation of Saigon and its aftermath―with heartbreaking detail, from the devastated battlefields and villages to the boats filled with terrified refugees.
Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles
This is the story of the Northern Ireland troubles told as never before. It is not concerned with the political bickering, but with the lives of those who have suffered and the deaths which have resulted from more than three decades of conflict
A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold through Arab-American Lives
The history of Arab settlement in the United States stretches back nearly as far as the history of America itself. For the first time, Alia Malek brings this history to life. In each of eleven spellbinding chapters, she inhabits the voice and life of one Arab American, at one time-stopping historical moment.
This book seeks to tell the life stories of the innocent men and women who have been needlessly swept up in the “war on terror.” As we approach the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, this collection of narratives gives voice to the people who have had their human rights violated here in the U.S. by post-9/11 policies and actions.
Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs/Los niños en un mundo de las pandillas
With profound empathy for a reality that is too easily defined and dismissed as repugnant, Unsettled/Desasosiego takes us on a visual journey into the lives of children deeply affected by civil war and gang violence.
Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future
Legal Lynching offers a succinct, accessible introduction to the debate over the death penalty's history and future, exposing a chilling frequency of legal error, systemic racial and economic discrimination, and pervasive government misconduct.
War Photographer is a documentary by Christian Frei about the photographer James Nachtwey. As well as telling the story of an iconic man in the field of war photography, the film addresses the broader scope of ideas common to all those involved in war journalism, as well as the issues that they cover.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
For the first time in the United States comes the tragic and profoundly important story of the legendary Canadian general who "watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.
Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur
In Blood and Soil, Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides.
Ophuls examines attitudes toward war in the Western media, and in the societies they inform. The 243-minute documentary interlaces stark realities of combat with mordantly hilarious references to Hollywood fantasy-versions of war, and includes over 50 interviews with some of the world’s leading journalists, commentators, historians, newscasters and many others.
An enthralling, deeply moving memoir from one of our foremost American war correspondents. Janine Di Giovanni has spent most of her career—more than twenty years—in war zones recording events on behalf of the voiceless. From Sarajevo to East Timor, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, she has been under siege and under fire.
Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)
Echoes of Violence is an award-winning collection of personal letters to friends from a foreign correspondent who is trying to understand what she witnessed during the iconic human disasters of our time--in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and New York City on September 11th, among many other places.
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life.
With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland tackles perhaps her most harrowing assignment to date: investigating the damage in her own mind and repairing her broken psyche. She begins to probe the depths of her illness, exploring our culture's history with PTSD, delving into the latest research by the country's top scientists and therapists, and spending time with veterans and their families.
Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide
This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values
In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld signed a memo that authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how this memo set the stage for divergence.
Shoah is Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary meditation on the Holocaust. Assembled from footage shot by the filmmaker during the 1970s and 1980s, it investigates the genocide at the level of experience: the geographical layout of the camps and the ghettos; the daily routines of imprisonment; the inexorable trauma of humiliation, punishment, extermination; and the fascinating insights of those who experienced these events first hand.
Humankind has struggled to make sense of human-upon-human violence. Edited by two of anthropology's most passionate voices on this subject, "Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology" is the only book of its kind available: a single volume exploration of social, literary, and philosophical theories of violence.
A gripping and insightful examination of the relationship between news-makers and news-watchers, looking at how images of war and tragedy are presented to us in the media and how we consume them
Guzmán focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship. Patricio Guzmán narrates the documentary himself and the documentary includes interviews and commentary from those affected and from astronomers and archeologists.
In his extraordinarily gripping and thought-provoking new book, Jeremy Bowen charts his progress from keen young novice whose first reaction to the sound of gunfire was to run towards it to the more circumspect veteran he is today
The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict
The Observer's chief foreign correspondent Peter Beaumont, takes us into the guts of modern conflict. He visits the bombed and abandoned home of Mullah Omar; discovers a deserted Al Qaeda camp where he finds documents describing a plan to attack London; talks to young bomb-throwers in a Rafah refugee camp. Unflinching and utterly gripping
France's leading sociologist shows how, far from reflecting the tastes of the majority, television, particularly television journalism, imposes ever-lower levels of political and social discourse on us all.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom.
Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World
MINDFULNESS reveals a set of simple yet powerful practices that you can incorporate into daily life to help break the cycle of anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and exhaustion. It promotes the kind of happiness and peace that gets into your bones. It seeps into everything you do and helps you meet the worst that life throws at you with new courage.
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well, the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in today’s world. By using the practices described within, you can learn to manage chronic pain resulting from illness and/or stress related disorders.
Slee: A Very Short Introduction, addresses the biological and psychological aspects of sleep, providing a basic understanding of what sleep is and how it is measured, a look at sleep through the human lifespan, and the causes and consequences of major sleep disorders.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.
This is a new edition of the world's leading textbook on journalism. Translated into more than a dozen languages, David Randall's handbook is an invaluable guide to the 'universals' of good journalistic practice for professional and trainee journalists worldwide.
Legends of People Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka
This provocative study of the political culture of nationalism in Sri Lanka and Australia - is one of the few genuinely comparative studies in anthropology and in taking up such an important question as nationalism it reminds us that truly relevant anthropology questions deep-seated cultural beliefs, including our own
Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain
Family Secrets offers a sweeping account of how shame--and the relationship between secrecy and openness--has changed over the last two centuries in Britain. Deborah Cohen uses detailed sketches of individual families as the basis for comparing different sorts of social stigma.
During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns were targeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened. Six hundred thousand German civilians died—a figure twice that of all American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans were left homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W. G. Sebald asks: Why?
The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan
Christina Lamb's evocative reporting brings to life the stories that no one else had written about: the abandoned victims of almost a quarter century of war. Her unique perspective on Afghanistan and deep passion for the people she writes about make this the definitive account of the tragic plight of a proud nation.
House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe
Christina Lamb's powerful narrative traces the history of the brutal civil war, independence, and the Mugabe years, all through the lives of two people on opposing sides. Although born within a few miles of each other, their experience growing up could not have been more different.
Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Failure in Afghanistan
Butcher & Bolt brilliantly brings to life the personalities involved in Afghanistan’s relationship with the world, chronicling the misunderstandings and missed opportunities that have so often led to war.
Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Jerusalem 1913 shows us a cosmopolitan city whose religious tolerance crumbled before the onset of Z ionism and its corresponding nationalism on both sides-a conflict that could have been resolved were it not for the onset of World War I. With extraordinary skill, Amy Dockser Marcus rewrites the story of one of the world's most indelible divides.
They Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq
Based on "Blood Brothers," the award-nominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a safe and secure neighborhood. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.
The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans
Aaron Glantz reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war and has been reporting on the plight of veterans ever since. The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou, and Civil Strife in Haiti
Kathie Klarreich's compelling memoir interweaves shattering political events with an intensely personal narrative about the Haitian musician Klarreich, who turns out to be as enthralling and complicated as the political events she covered.
In the tradition of Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood, Columbine is destined to be a classic. A close-up portrait of hatred, a community rendered helpless, and the police blunders and cover-ups, it is a compelling and utterly human portrait of two killers-an unforgettable cautionary tale for our times
Juvenile, photographer Joseph Rodríguez spent several years following several youths, from arrest, counseling, trial adjudication, and incarceration, to release, probation, house arrest, group homes, and the search for employment and meaning in their lives.
By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East Los Angeles gang warfare. This story is at times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.
Still Here, documents the ongoing expressions of hope, perseverance, and suffering in the still-devastated communities of New Orleans and Texas post hurricane Katrina. Rodríguez spent two years photographing and interviewing families and individuals who shared their daily struggles to rebuild their lives.
Breaking News, Breaking Down, Two journalists' emotional journey after 9/11 & Katrina - This program tells the hidden story of how traumatic news impacts the men and women who cover it. Mike Walter loved chasing the big story, but on one September morning, the biggest story of his career chased him down: a jet rained from the sky, piercing the Pentagon and shattering his emotional well being.
One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers
The debate about women and torture has, until recently, focused on women as victims of violence. The essays in One of the Guys challenge and examine the expectations placed on women while attempting to understand female perpetrators of abuse and torture in a broader context.
Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War
Tara McKelvey — the first U.S.journalist to speak with female prisoners from Abu Ghraib — traveled to the Middle East and across the United States to seek out victims and perpetrators. McKelvey tells how soldiers, acting in an atmosphere that encouraged abuse and sadism, were unleashed on a prison population of which the vast majority, according to army documents, were innocent civilians.
Gogo Mama : A Journey Into the Lives of Twelve African Women
This book is a journey across Africa, in all its complexity; from the townships of Johannesburg, to the back alleys of Zanzibar; from the frontline of the war in the Sudan, to the nightclubs of Cairo. It is a vivid, illuminating and often haunting composite picture of an extraordinary continent, in the words of the women who know it best.
Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America
This is the first anthology of its kind, bringing together outstanding practitioners of the muckraking tradition, from the Revolutionary era to the present day. Ranging from mainstream figures like Woodward and Bernstein to legendary iconoclasts such as I. F. Stone and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the dispatches in this collection combine the thrill of the chase after facts with a burning sense of outrage
Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice
This book examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context. Chapter authors emphasize basic therapeutic skills such as empathic listening, instilling resilience, and creating meaning, in the service of empirically-supported, highly efficacious trauma interventions.
Ari Goldman’s exploration of the emotional and spiritual aspects of spending a year in mourning for his father will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one, as he describes how this year affected him as a son, husband, father, and member of his community.
What began as a project to deepen his knowledge of the world’s sacred beliefs turned out to be an extraordinary journey of spiritual illumination, one in which Goldman reexamined his own faith as an Orthodox Jew and opened his mind to the great religions of the world. Written with warmth, humor, and penetrating clarity, The Search for God at Harvard is a book for anyone who has wrestled with the question of what it means to take religion seriously today.
Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today
In Being Jewish, Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent thoughts about an absorbing exploration of modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform character of the religion today.
This book is a collection of reflective crime pieces, often approaching the events from different angles, yet written by on-the spot observers and reporters. There is an emphasis on the victims, and as a result these stories are written with sensitivity and compassion rather than sensationalism.
Over twenty-five tales of grisly murders and suspicious killings are laid out for inspection, including the story of the Police Killers and tales of the seedy Melbourne underworld.
This fully revised and updated new edition of Smart Health Choices will provide you with the tools for assessing health advice, whether it comes from a specialist, general practitioner, naturopath, the media, the Internet, or a friend. It shows you how to take an active role in your health care, and to make the best decisions for you and your loved ones based on personal preferences and the best available evidence.
The Spanish-language version of the Dart Center's 40-page guide to help journalists, photojournalists and editors report on violence while protecting both victims and themselves.
9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks
This book comprehensively describes the psychological response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and, to a lesser degree, Washington DC. The impact of what happened on the local and US national population is considered through various epidemiological studies, as well as personal accounts from some of those more directly involved.
Filled with astonishing personal stories, conflict, and drama, Feet to the Fire gives readers the rare opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of this nation’s most powerful journalists and news executives and experience their highly stressful environments. With each new and revealing interview, Borjesson gathers devastating details from national security and intelligence reporters, White House journalists, Middle East experts, war correspondents, and others. Like pieces of a terrible puzzle, these conversations combine to provide a hair-raising view of the mechanisms by which the truth has been manufactured post 9/11.
Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss
Grounded in the latest research in the fields of trauma studies, literary biography, and the history of journalism, this study draws upon the lively and sometimes breathtaking accounts of popular writers such as Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Graham Greene, and Truman Capote, exploring the role that trauma has played in shaping their literary works. Underwood notes that the influence of traumatic experience upon journalistic literature is being reshaped by a number of factors, including news media trends, the advance of the Internet, the changing nature of the journalism profession, the proliferation of psychoactive drugs, and journalists' greater self-awareness of the impact of trauma in their work.
Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions
Daring to Feel is a bold, brave book. Jody Santos challenges the entrenched doctrine that journalists are neutral, dispassionate observers of 'fact.' Santos demonstrates how journalists themselves and society as a whole benefit from emotionally nuanced and emotionally engaged reporting. This is a beautifully written tribute to the passion of journalists and the heart-wrenching stories they cover.
The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War
In The Things They Cannot Say, award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites asks these difficult questions of eleven soldiers and marines, who—by sharing the truth about their wars—display a rare courage that transcends battlefield heroics. For each of these men, many of whom Sites first met while in Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth means something different. One struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love; another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man; yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him. Sites also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war—including his complicity in a murder—and the redemptive powers of storytelling that saved him from a self-destructive downward spiral.
Kevin Sites, the award-winning journalist, covered virtually every major global hot spot as the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo! News. Beginning his journey with the anarchic chaos of Somalia in September 2005 and ending with the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Sites talks with rebels and government troops, child soldiers and child brides, and features the people on every side, including those caught in the cross fire. His honest reporting helps destroy the myths of war by putting a human face on war's inhumanity.
Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War
Using his trademark immersive style, Kevin Sites uncovered surprising stories with unexpected truths. He swam in the Kunduz River with an infamous warlord named Nabi Gechi, who demonstrated both his fearsome killing skills as well as a genius for peaceful invention. Sites talked with ex-Taliban fighters, politicians, female cops, farmers, drug addicts, and diplomats, and patrolled with American and Afghan soldiers. In Swimming with Warlords he helps us to understand this kingdom of primitive beauty, dark mysteries, and savage violence, as well as the conflict that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives--and what we might expect tomorrow and in the years to come.
The Price They Paid is the stunning and dramatic true story of a legendary helicopter commander in Vietnam and the flight crews that followed him into the most intensive helicopter warfare ever—and how that brutal experience has changed their lives in the forty years since the war ended.
What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars
Most Americans are now familiar with PTSD and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict.
Collective Conviction: The Story of Disaster Action
Collective Conviction tells the story of Disaster Action, a small charity founded in 1991 by survivors and bereaved people from the disasters of the late 1980s, including Zeebrugge, King's Cross, Clapham, Lockerbie, Hillsborough and the Marchioness. The aims were to create a health and safety culture in which disasters were less likely to occur and to support others affected by similar events.