Author: Sid Holt File Type: pdf With the work of journalists under fire around the world, this years anthology of National Magazine Awards finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. These pieces from writers driven to explore Americas fault lines include Shane Bauers harrowing My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard (Mother Jones), a visceral portrait of the abuses of the carceral system, and Sarah Stillmans account of the havoc wreaked on young peoples lives when they are put on sex-offender registries (The New Yorker). In two different considerations of parenting, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks for a school for her daughter in a rapidly changing, racially divided Brooklyn (New York Times Magazine) and Michael Chabon takes his thirteen-year-old son to Fashion Week in Paris (GQ). Pamela Colloff explores how the 1966 University of Texas Tower mass shooting changed the course of one survivors life (Texas Monthly), and Siddhartha Mukherjee depicts the art and agony of oncology (New York Times Magazine). Other selections take up the shocks of the election, including Matt Taibbis irreverent dispatches from the campaign trail (Rolling Stone) and George Saunderss transfixing account of Trumps rallies (The New Yorker). Jeffrey Goldberg talks through Obamas foreign-policy legacy with the president (The Atlantic), Andrew Sullivan fears for the future of democracy (New York), and Gabriel Sherman relates how the women of Fox News brought to light Roger Ailess predations (New York). Joining them are Rebecca Solnits wide-ranging Harpers commentary, Becca Rothfelds pondering women waiting from The Odyssey to Tinder (Hedgehog Review), and bold expeditions into nature David Quammen ventures to Yellowstone to consider the future of wild places (National Geographic), and Mac McClelland sets off for Cuba in search of the ivory-billed woodpecker (Audubon).**From Publishers WeeklyAll of the essays in the series eighth year exhibit a timeless prose in the midst of meeting deadlines. But many also resonate with a special sense of timeliness, such as the insightful Rules of Engagement by William Langewiesche, a detailed study for Vanity Fair of the U.S. massacre of Iraqi citizens in the town of Haditha. Other essays have a similar sense of urgency Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman for Rolling Stonethe result of a nine-month investigationis a terrific and balanced look at an organization whose top leaders assert that false ideas, including the concepts of God, Christ, and organized religion, date back 75 million years to the work of an evil galactic warrior named Xenu. C.J. Chiverss The School for Esquire is a harrowing account of the three-day siege by Chechen terrorists of a grammar school in the Russian town of Beslan. Other, lighter pieces include Vanessa Grigoriadiss skillful depiction for New York of the crazy-like-a-fox business and personal lifestyle of Karl Lagerfeld, Boy Prince of Fashion. (Dec. 26) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. ReviewA celebration of the venerable magazine and the kind of writing you can only find in magazines. (Marblehead Reporter) Every piece in this collection is masterful. They are all beautifully written, deeply emotional and evocative. (Bruce Elder The Sydney Morning Herald)

Author: A. J. Sherman File Type: epub An essential purchase for anyone interested in modern Middle East history. Jerusalem PostThe strife-torn three decades of British rule over Palestine, known as the Mandate, is one of the great dramas in British imperial history, and remains passionately controversial now, some fifty years after the last British High Commissioner left Jerusalem. British policies, promises, the mere presence of Britain in the Holy Land, are all still argued, deplored, or--less frequently--admired. In all the polemic surrounding the Mandate, the thousands of British men and women who actually lived and worked in Palestine have been overlooked, as if their presence there had been irrelevant. Whether civil servants, teachers, soldiers, or missionaries, posted to Jerusalem or remote outposts in the hills, whatever their rank or tasks, the British of the Mandate lived through an extraordinary, transforming personal adventure. Here for the first time is their often poignant story, written largely in their own words, with honesty, humor, and occasional bitterness, against a background of tragic and violent events. Their letters home, diaries, and memoirs vividly describe British landscapes, cultural affinities and misunderstandings, feelings for Arabs or Jews, accomplishments and mishaps, and a strong sense of imperial mission coupled with an often sorrowful awareness of human limitations and the folly of unrealistic expectations. This powerful and authentic personal writing, enhanced by evocative illustrations, brings to life a notable chapter in imperial history and illuminates the experiences and motivations of the last, remarkably articulate generation of British proconsuls and their wives.**Amazon.com ReviewThe British ruled over Palestine, the state that would become Israel, from the end of World War I to 1948. In those three decades, writes A.J. Sherman, British colonial administrators dimly appreciated that Palestine might present something of a problem, since it contained not merely a native Arab population firmly attached to their lands and traditions, but also a European-educated, sophisticated class of Zionist Jewish immigrants and settlers. That dim recognition, and the fond hope that Palestine would somehow fit into the scheme of a worldwide Pax Britannica, quickly gave way to resignation in the face of guerrilla war conducted by Arabs and Jews alike, waged against each other and against their occupiers, whose story Sherman ably tells. --Gregory McNameeFrom Kirkus Reviews Sherman (Island Refuge Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich, not reviewed) is uniquely positioned to write on the British experience of Palestine Born in Jerusalem under the mandate, he is a lawyer and historian. Rarely has the story of the mandate period in Palestine been told from the point of view of its caretakers, the British. Sherman uses diaries, letters, and interviews to recount the reactions of British subjects who found themselves working and living in what was then Palestine during the 30 years of British rule. From the outset, Whitehall naively tried to appease irreconcilable forces. The picture of the occupiers that emerges from the first half of this book makes it clear why The British men and women quoted by Sherman project an air of earnest good intentions, leavened by a condescension to both Jew and Arab that often borders on (and sometimes lapses into) racism. The lasting impression of English life in 1920s Palestine is of a backwater in which the colonialists struggle to maintain a semblance of old-country habits from fox hunting (jackals, actually) to Gilbert and Sullivan. But with the 30s and the beginning of mass immigration of Jews into Palestine, tensions burst into violence repeatedly. And the aftermath of WW II brings the bloody, messy end of the mandate. The first half of this book suffers from the repetitive nature of daily life in an insular community, but the final two chapters, which take the story from 1939 to the end in 1948, make grimly compelling reading. Sherman writes elegantly himself, and many of his sources are insightful, particularly Sir Henry Gurney, the last high commissioner, in selections from his diaries. The casual distaste that many of the British display for the Jews (and, to a lesser extent, the Arabs) will discomfit many, but this is a readable version of the battle for Israeli independence from a perspective that will be unfamiliar to most Americans. -- 1997, Kirkus Associates, LP.