New From Nation Books‏

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of Nation Books, and the third year of our partnership with the Perseus Books Group. The book business, like all other information and content-based services, is grappling with the huge changes careening through our culture. Every aspect of the way we gather, store, present, promote and consume information is up for review. There are a few constants, however, and at the top of the list are the treasured writers and fearless journalists who have sustained Nation Books from the start. Kudos to Nation Books Editorial Director Carl Bromley and Associate Editor Ruth Baldwin for establishing an ambitious, distinctive and admired voice in this precarious climate, and to John Sherer and our friends at Basic Books for their skillful management of the imprint. Scroll down the columns that follow and you'll see what they've been up to. And if you feel the impulse, click on any title and you can find out how to can get obtain a copy of your own. Hamilton Fish, Publisher Panel on the economy highlights themes in Meltdown C-SPAN plans national broadcast April 5 Meltdown: The Economic Collapse and a People's Plan for Recovery Edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel and the Editors at The Nation "Easy credit was a substitute for decent wages in America," observed Barbara Ehrenreich at a televised Nation Books panel on the economy, held on March 6 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Organized to coincide with the publication of Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered our Financial System and How We Can Recover (Nation Books), the panel featured Joseph E. Stiglitz, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Jeff Madrick and Christopher L. Hayes. With taxpayer money being funneled to bank bailouts and the rising fury over executive bonuses, the event clearly tapped into the zeitgeist—the line began to form hours before the panel started and more than 500 people had to be turned away. The discussion ranged from the plight of America's autoworkers, arguments for and against bank nationalization to the impact of the crisis on the developing world, the need for regulation and more. The panel will be broadcast nationally on C-SPAN'S Book-TV on April 5 at 3 p.m. and on April 6 at 6.15 a.m. EST (check your local listings). Listen to the podcast here. Read our liveblog of the event on the Nation Books Twitter page. Join the Meltdown book club on Facebook. SPRING READING The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America William Kleinknecht Award-winning journalist William Kleinknecht builds the definitive case against the now lionized Reagan and his economic policies, revealing how so much of the former president's carefully calibrated image is a work of fiction. "The most concise and well-thought-out argument against Reagan....many of his phrases linger after one has closed the book." (Truthdig) Takes "the shine off the conservative icon and debunks the notion of Reagan as the Everyman President." (Vanity Fair) The Man Who Sold the World is a "clear-eyed jeremiad" and "Kleinknecht's timely book serves as a crucial reminder of what we talk about when we talk about Reaganism." (Book Forum) "Sloughs off 30 years of polished hero imaging to reveal a disassociated, anti-poor, pro-rapacious business figurehead prodded this way and that by a gang of power brokers determined to strip away fiscal, health and transparency regulations...this salient tome serves as a minority report for the president's 'Morning in America.'" (Rocky Mountain News) Kleinknecht has been interviewed on Air America's Ring of Fire, KPFK-FM's Background Briefing and Uprising Radio. He also wrote an Op-Ed for AlterNet on Ronald Reagan's 98th birthday. Join the Man Who Sold the World book club on Facebook. The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson Two leading British economic journalists point to the origins of America's vulnerable economy in a prescient analysis of the roots of the global economic crisis. "The authors make for witty guides through dense subject matter," and this book has "withstood the test of time... The book is a rollicking, acerbic account of the bubble and its collapse." (The Daily Telegraph here and here) "...a superbly timed, trenchant analysis of the Anglo-American political culture that has turned the sober profession of banking into a supercasino where the house always wins." (The New Statesman) "Engagingly written." (Financial Times) Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War Pratap Chatterjee From Halliburton's role as the logistical backbone of the U.S. mission in Iraq—so crucial to the conduct of the war and subsequent occupation—to widespread bribes, graft and skimming, Halliburton's Army is a devastating exposé of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism. Chatterjee investigates the underscrutinized activities of Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) in Iraq and around the world. Pratap Chatterjee was recently interviewed on Democracy Now! about this incendiary new book, and on what Afghans would like to see from President Obama's Afghanistan strategy. His recent essay on TomDispatch, One Country, Three Futures, was reprinted on Salon and Asia Times. Chatterjee appeared on a recent panel discussion about the future of private military contractors at the New America Foundation. Join the Halliburton's Army book club on Facebook. NEW IN PAPERBACK The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi Aram Roston Aram Roston's investigative biography of Ahmad Chalabi, The Man Who Pushed America to War, now out in paperback, was listed in The New York Times' "Paperback Row" column. "Roston presents a coherent and fair-minded account of how this wealthy banker connived to get the American military to drive Saddam Hussein from power and install him in his place." The reviewer, Leslie Gelb, wrote that "the problem is not that Chalabi did what he thought was necessary; it is that we fell for it all without serious examination." IN THE NEWS Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay Clive Stafford Smith After seven years in custody, British national Binyam Mohamed was released from Guantánamo Bay and finally allowed to return to the UK. His lawyer (and Nation Books author) Clive Stafford Smith spoke with Democracy Now! about his client's long journey from Pakistan to Morocco to Afghanistan to the U.S. naval base in Cuba and finally, his return home. Since Mohamed's 2002 capture, he was secretly rendered, tortured, forced to sign a fake confession under duress and charged with conspiracy to commit terror attacks. He was recently declared innocent and released on February 24. In 2007, Nation Books published Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, Stafford Smith's story about his experiences defending more than 40 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Stafford Smith has also authored several articles in The Guardian and The New Statesman on rendition and torture, has been widely cited as a source and expert commentator and was recently profiled in The Times (UK). Nation Books Author Gabriel Thompson Wins 2009 Margolis Award Nation Books author Gabriel Thompson, who is currently writing and researching his new book on a year spent as an undocumented worker, has won the 2009 Margolis Award. This prize is awarded annually to a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice. Thompson also received an Investigative Fund grant from The Nation Institute for his article, Meet the Wealth Gap. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army Jeremy Scahill With the resignation of Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and the rebranding of the private mercenary company from Blackwater Worldwide to Xe (pronounced zee), Nation Books author and Institute Fellow Jeremy Scahill has returned to the media spotlight. He was recently interviewed on Democracy Now! and has published several articles for AlterNet on the administration's recent payment of $70 million to Blackwater, the emerging Obama policy on Iraq and a Chicago mercenary firm doing private security in Israel and Iraq. Check out the Blackwater book tour on Facebook. FORTHCOMING TITLES A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman Wadad Makdisi Cortas "This is my story, the story of an Arab woman. It is the story of a lost world." So begins A World I Loved, an unforgettable memoir that interweaves on woman's life with the political and social upheavals that have rent Lebanon and the wider Middle East over the past century. "A moving record of a life well—and roundly-lived—in the middle of political upheaval. It pulses with the love of homeland—the larger Arab homeland, and shows how closely the personal and the political are intertwined in our part of the world." –Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love and Mezzaterra "Wadad Makdisi Cortas' rich memoir offers us privileged access to a world long gone. As an accomplished and intelligent woman, she ably narrates the fascinating details of daily life in Beirut, of intellectual developments all over the Arab world, and of the complex society she lived in as it struggled with French colonialism, the trauma of Palestine, and its own internal problems." –Rashid Khalidi, author of The Iron Cage The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chávez and the Making of Modern Venezuela Brian A. Nelson On April 11, 2002, nearly a million Venezuelans marched on the presidential palace to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chávez, Led by Pedro Carmona and Carlos Ortega, the opposition represented a cross-section of society furious with Chávez's economic policies, specifically his mishandling of the Venezuelan oil industry. But as the day progressed, the march turned violent, sparking a military revolt that led to the temporary ousting of Chávez. Over the ensuing, turbulent 72 hours, Venezuelans would confront the deep divisions within their society and ultimately decide the best course for their country—and its oil—in the new century. An exemplary piece of narrative journalism, The Silence and the Scorpion provides rich insight into the complexities of modern Venezuela. "Nelson takes readers from the streets to the halls of the presidential palace, from frightened journalists smuggling tapes of riots back to their stations to be put on the air to a terrified Chávez. ...[H]is status as a foreigner familiar with the culture of Caracas and an experienced journalist and academic gives him a unique vantage point from which to tell the very personal stories of those three days of chaos." (Publishers Weekly) "Fast-paced" and "engaging." (Kirkus) Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone Eduardo Galeano Mirrors is a sometimes bawdy, sometimes irreverent, sometimes heart-breaking unofficial history of the world seen—and mirrored to us—through the eyes and voices of history's unseen, unheard, and forgotten. Taking in 5,000 years of history, recalling the lives of artists and writers, gods and visionaries from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York and Mumbai, and told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes that resurrect the lives of the "thinkers and the feelers, the curious, condemned for asking, rebels and losers and lovely lunatics who were and are the salt of the earth," Mirrors is a magic mosaic of our humanity. "There is a mysterious power in Galeano's storytelling. He uses his craft to invade the privacy of the reader's mind, to persuade him or her to read and to continue reading to the very end, to surrender to the charm of his writing and the power of his idealism." –Isabel Allende