Upside Down — A Primer for the Looking-Glass World
By Eduardo Galeano. Translated by Mark Fried.
(Metropolitan Books, 2000)

From the winner of the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom comes a bitingly funny, kaleidoscopic vision of the first world through the eyes of the third.

Synopsis:  This Third World perspective on the First World sees nothing but folly, lies, terror and misuse of power. In a series of lesson plans and a "program of study" about our beleaguered planet, Galeano takes the reader on a wild trip through the global looking glass. Galeano is one of Latin America's most respected historians, and his trenchant analysis of a world turned upside-down teaches as it entertains.

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"This is an extraordinary book, especially startling not because it is a diligently researched and scathing critique of contemporary America, but because it is written by a Soviet dissident who arrived here with great expectations and discovered a sobering reality. The scope of the book is breathtaking, a sweeping survey, factually precise and philosophically provocative, which deserves to be compared to de Tocqueville's 19^th century classic. I hope it will be widely read."
— Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Boston University.

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The More You Watch the Less You Know: News Wars, Submerged Hopes, Media Adventures
By Danny Schechter
(Seven Stories Press, 1997)

Review from The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, 12/21/1997:  "The book's strength lies in the detail and immediacy of Schecter's experience in the major media, his fight to insert serious human and historical content into the public domain and alarm at what its absence means to the future of democracy." — Ben H. Bagdikian

Related Links

Read excerpts from Danny Schechter's latest book, "News Dissector — Passions, Pieces and Polemics 1960-2000" More info on "The More You Watch" available here

Review:  "From his beginnings at a Boston rock station to a producer's spot with '20/20' to his extensive contributions as producer and director of television specials, Schechter's media experiences have put him at the head of the line to comment on the industry's eccentricities. Throughout, he has closely observed the people, politics, and conglomerates of the media world with uncanny recall, providing an absorbing retrospective replete with astute observations on the subtleties underlying content, "slants," players and messages conveyed to the public. The result is an intelligent and saddening yet humorous depiction of the inner workings of giant media groups and behind-the-scenes forces that often mold public reaction to world events. For those with an interest beyond the superficial in news and media, this will be particularly thought-provoking. For general circulating libraries, especially those with media collections." — Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, N.J.

Review:  Although his book is supposed to be a critique of the television industry, in reality it is the autobiography of Schechter. And as a combination of the two it is often informative and sometimes hilarious. Schechter got his start working at the counterculture WBCN radio station in Boston. He tells laugh-out-loud stories about his confrontations with the FBI and the "humiliating" experience of seeing his FBI file, which referred to him as "amusing, good-natured and happy." He recalls his time as a Nieman Fellow and his confrontation with Henry Kissinger, whom he accused of killing six million people in Indochina. Schechter recalls losing his job as a producer at WCVB-TV when a song called "Butt F---" was aired; working at Ted Turner's fledging CNN; and his time at the ABC ("Always Be Conservative") Network. He laments the "Howardization" of radio by shock-jocks Howard Stern and Don Imus and the "collusion" he ascribes to politicians and the press. There are also unflattering profiles of Barbara Walters, Roone Arledge and Ted Koppel. This is a sophisticated, irreverent look at television that will make readers wince and laugh.

Synopsis:  An examination of the state of the print and broadcast media today, written by a former television reporter and network producer for PBS, CNN, and ABC, who now directs independent television documentaries. Schecter maintains that network pressures over the last 30 years have lowered the production standards within the news industry, resulting in superficial, biased and even inaccurate reporting.

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The Information Bomb
By Paul Virilio
(Verso, 2000)

"Civilization or the militarization of science?"

Publisher's Note:  "Civilization or the militarization of science?" With this typically hyperbolic and provocative question as a starting point, Virilio explores the dominion of techno-science, cyberwar and the new information technologies over our lives ... and deaths. After the era of the atomic bomb, Virilio posits an era of genetic and information bombs that replace the apocalyptic bang of nuclear death with the whimper of a subliminally reinforced eugenics. We are entering the age of euthanasia.

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America Besieged
By Michael Parenti
(City Lights Books, 1998)

Originally presented as radio commentaries in 1996, these assaults on corporate venality, militarism and government indifference to the poor sometimes sound better read aloud than on paper; while heated sound bites are numerous, additional light might have been shed if the polemics were supplemented more frequently by data. Nonetheless, Parenti's (Democracy for the Few) voice is sharp and urgent, providing a short but comprehensive course in radical analysis. He ticks off what he feels are America's problems: a political culture all too ready to worship politicians rather than ask hard questions ("[I]t is the essence of democracy," he cautions, "that we not trust and not have faith in our leaders"); a fundamentally unjust economy in which "pollution, like sin, is regularly denounced but vigorously practiced"; a state shockingly willing to tolerate the murder of left-wing dissidents from other countries; and a narrow-minded, jingoistic mass media that serves as the handmaid of corporate power (why, he asks, did neo-Nazi but pro-capitalist David Duke's failed Senate bid receive so much more attention than Socialist Bernard Sanders's victory?). Rather more hyperbolically, he notes that the recent Olympics "felt more like Munich 1936 than Atlanta 1996." Opinionated and angry, but also reasonable and sincerely hopeful in the possibility of a better future through collective action, this is a book Joe Hill would have loved. (June)

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Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
By Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
(Pantheon Books, 1988)

Review from Whole Earth Review, fall 1995:  "If you read this book, you will never again read a daily newspaper the way you used to." — Katy Butler

Publisher's Note:  An intellectual dissection of the modern media to show how an underlying economics of publishing warps the news.

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Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy
By James Fallows
(Pantheon Books, 1996)

Review from Newsweek (1997):  "Important and lucid. ... It moves smartly beyond the usual attacks to the more profound problems in the modern American journalism. ... Dead-on."

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Capitalism and the Information Age
By Robert W. McChesney; Ellen Meiksins Wood, John Bellamy Foster, editors.
(Monthly Review Press, 1998)

Book News Annotation:  Presents 14 new essays by leading critical thinkers, taking on the communications revolution from the vantage point of history and political economy. Discussion encompasses myths of the global village, the information economy, the role of propaganda and neoliberalism in telecommunications. Other areas examined include the growing tension between the democratic potential of info-tech and the demands of capitalist profit, the problem of access to information when it is sold as a commodity, and control of information by major corporations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, Oregon (booknews.com)

Publisher's Note:  Are the new technologies of the information age reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential of democracy and altering the course of history itself? "Capitalism and the Information Age" presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies.

"Anyone concerned about the direction the information revolution is taking should read this book. The subjects covered are far-ranging... [The] essays are clearly written, making the book accessible to a broad range of readers. In short, highest recommendation..." — Choice

"Explains in very concrete terms how the global communication revolution is still firmly controlled by capital, and that the 'freedom' of expression we enjoy today is really shaped by a few mega-corporations who own virtually all of the media and entertainment industries." — Development In Practice

Not a day goes by that we don't see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article heralding the miraculous new technologies of the information age. The communication revolution associated with these technologies is often heralded as the key to a new age of "globalization." How is all of this reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential for democracy, and altering the course of history itself?

Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Taken together, the essays reveal how the new information technologies have been "grafted onto a global capitalist system characterized by vast and growing inequality, economic stagnation, market saturation, financial instability, urban crisis, social polarization, graded access to information, [and] economic degradation...."

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Rebel Radio: The Story of El Salvador's Radio Venceremos
By José Ignacio López Vigil
(Curbstone, 1994)

Review from publisher's catalogue: &nsbp; "These remarkable stories tell a tale of almost incredible courage and ingenuity in the struggle to keep the spark of hope alive in a country being turned into a living Hell. It is a real tribute to the human spirit." — Noam Chomsky

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Hidden Agendas
By John Pilger
(The New Press, 1998)

A reporter presents his coverage of legal arms dealers, South Africa's democracy, slave labor in Burma, and several other stories he feels the mainstream British media neglects.

In this collection of "slow news," a reporter presents his coverage of legal arms dealers, South Africa's democracy, slave labor in Burma and several other stories he feels the mainstream British media neglects. "Hidden Agendas" is about power, propaganda and censorship. It picks up where Pilger's previous books, "Heroes, A Secret Country" and "Distant Voices," left off.

Publisher's Note:  In these passionate reports from Vietnam, South Africa and Burma, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger gives the unfiltered truth about worldwide struggles for justice and the international role of the United States and Britain. From inside "big media," he also shows how news gets buried, demolishing utopian illusions about the "media age" and the "global village." Hailed by Time Out as "the closest we have to the great correspondents of the 1930s like Ed Murrow and James Cameron," John Pilger is an unflinching crusader whose work has opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people. His new book, "Hidden Agendas," is a guided tour through the invisible corridors of power and the forgotten stories of the powerless. With 100,000 copies already in print in the United Kingdom, "Hidden Agendas" is a bracing corrective to media apathy and essential for anyone who wants to know how the world really works.

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Made Possible By ... The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States
By James Ledbetter
(Verso, 1997)

An examination of the history and politics of the Public Broadcasting System in the United States, written by the media critic of The Village Voice.

Review:  The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was formed by an act of Congress in 1967. In this brisk and informative book, Ledbetter, a staff writer for Manhattan's Village Voice, reveals what a political punching bag PBS has been, a scapegoat of the Republicans from Richard Nixon to Newt Gingrich. Ledbetter charges that the board of PBS has been a depository for political hacks, that corporate underwriting is a pernicious method of influencing content and that the military-industrial complex also has power to affect programming. The author assesses National Public Radio (NPR) and maintains that Bobby Kennedy's former press secretary Frank Mankiewicz fiscally mismanaged it in the 1980s. Ledbetter discusses what he calls "Nixon's Revenge," the present conservatism of the talk shows that have become a staple on PBS such as "The McLaughlin Group," "Firing Line" and "Washington Week in Review." Ledbetter offers solutions for helping PBS to find its niche in the television of the 2lst century, such as airing more documentaries on the failed state of our educational system. A smart read. (Jan.)

Publisher's Note:  An engrossing history of public broadcasting, from its initial idealistic attempt to reshape the vast wasteland of television to its current lamentable state — as safe, consistently mediocre and dependent on corporate financing as its commercial counterparts.

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Air Wars — The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting
By Jerold M. Starr
(Beacon Press, 2000)

In documenting the struggle of one community's battle with the local public-broadcasting station, this book champions community activism and celebrates the triumphs of local interests.

In this story of greed, politics and television, an award-winning sociologist states that in the rush for new media outlets and with declining government support, public television has forged alliances with private business to expand its market share and, in the process, is abandoning its obligation to the public.

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Red-Hot Radio: Sex, Violence and Politics at the End of the American Century
By Saul Landau
(Common Courage Press, 1998)

Publisher's press release:  Fasten your seat belts for this gate-crashing tour of politics, vice and corruption. In this collection of trenchant political commentaries first heard on Pacifica Radio, Saul Landau treats American politics to a salutary dose of wit, wisdom and good old-fashioned fire and brimstone analysis.

There's something for everyone, good and wicked alike, in "Red Hot Radio":

• Parents everywhere will be gripped by "What Do You Tell the Kids," a primer on the birds, the bees and Bill, and how to explain Monicagate;
  
  
• Those salivating over Mexico's investment climate may clutch their purse-strings a bit tighter when reading Landau's interview with Subcommandante Marcos, as well as his article on the Zapatistas — will the obstacles to enslaving our southern neighbor never be removed?
  
  
• Wealthy fat cats won't be able to resist sampling "Praise the Lord and Pass the Olestra Chips," though it might take away their appetite (for awhile);
  
  
• Workers will be happy to know that for Ford in Mexico, "Pollution is Job 1;"
  
  
• Cold War buffs, secure and smug in the knowledge that we have defeated the Communist Monster, won't be able to put down "Castro and the Pope," a guide on how to understand the Pope's visit to Cuba.

Though he doesn't mind having fun with the crises and conundrums of modern American politics, Landau always stays focused on the realities behind them. His unique connections to Washington's national security culture allow him to delve beneath the surface of issues like the Iraq crisis and NATO expansion. His commentary sheds invaluable light on current trade and economic policies, focusing on how they affect the poor and underrepresented peoples of the world.

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Shot in America redefines media history through Chicano film and television.

One of the most influential figures in ethnic media studies takes direct aim at how Chicano filmmaking has been represented in the history of media in the United States. Shot in America tackles seemingly intractable dilemmas involving the political and market functions of film and TV to provide a definitive response to the debates over cultural and racial identity that have embroiled media and cultural studies over the past two decades.

Noriega offers a compelling and detailed description of an enormous body of work by Chicano media makers against the backdrop of Chicano social movements, politics, and activism over a forty-year period-an extraordinary exposition of the civil rights movement, media reform activities, and public affairs programming that constitutes the prehistory of independent and minority cinemas.

Noriega reveals the ways in which Chicano and other minority protests both emerged within and were regulated by the very institutions that excluded them. Shot in America is a study with broad implications for our understanding of cultural politics and the entertainment industries.

— Chon A. Noriega is associate professor of critical studies in the Department of Film and Television at UCLA and editor of Visible Nations (May, 2000). Noriega is also the editor of Urban Exile: Collected Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr. and Chicanos and Film.

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Primetime Blues: African Americans On Network Television
By Donald Bogle
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)

Publisher's note:  "Primetime Blues" is the first comprehensive history of African Americans on network television. Donald Bogle not only examines the stereotypes that too often continue to march across the screen today but also shows the ways in which television has been invigorate by extraordinary black performers, whose presence on the screen has been of great significance to the African American community. This important book presents a history rich in achievement and paradox a history that tells us as much about attitudes toward race and sex as it does about the way in which this country feels most comfortable viewing its African American citizens.

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Spy TV — Just Who Is the Digital TV Revolution Overthrowing?
By David Burke
(White Dot, 2000)

This might be the last generation to have privacy as we know it.

Publisher's Note:  While you watch it, it watches you. When you turn it on, they know you turned it on. When you change channels or take a trip to the virtual shopping mall, they'll be following you. Find out what broadcasters are saying about interactive television. Hear their Orwellian plans to keep a file on every viewer, in every single home. Who buys the file? The highest bidder. What will they do with it? Figure out how to modify your behavior. What say do you have? None. Just as you have no idea what software is downloaded to your set-top box. The applications are already written, many of them aimed at children. This might be the last generation to have privacy as we know it. Presented as an illustrated, satirical and humorous book, "Spy TV," catches the media execs out, tricking them into exposing their plans from their own mouths. Spoof "viewers guides" demonstrate the methodology of interactive TV, and handy templates and fact sheets help the viewer fight back.

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