In all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee. Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire expertise that home-based reporters take for granted—facility with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of the world in context for an audience with little experience and often limited interest in foreign affairs—a task made all the more daunting because of the consequence to national security. In Journalism’s Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton—a historian and former foreign correspondent—provides a sweeping and definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers’ perceptions of the world across two centuries. From the colonial era—when newspaper printers hustled down to wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships—to the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton explores journalism’s constant—and not always successful—efforts at “dishing the foreign news,” as James Gordon Bennett put it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the French Revolution, the early emergence of “special correspondents” and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War, the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the “golden age” of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced, independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis’ intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to American doorsteps. Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871 expedition to East Africa to “find Livingstone”; and Jack Belden, a forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents, editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the political leaders who made the news and the technicians who invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering. Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism’s Roving Eye offers a keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead.

Click, a straight-edge transgender kid, is searching for hir place within a pack of newly sober gender rebels in the dilapidated punk houses of Portland, Oregon circa 2002. Ze embarks on a dizzying whirlwind of leather, sex, hormones, house parties, and protests until hir gender fluidity takes an unexpected turn and the pack is sent reeling.

An essay collection from “the Henry Miller of food writing” and New York Times–bestselling author of The Raw and the Cooked (The Wall Street Journal). Jim Harrison was beloved for his untamed prose and larger-than-life appetite. Collecting many of his most entertaining and inspired food pieces for the first time, A Really Big Lunch “brings him roaring to the page again in all his unapologetic immoderacy, with spicy bon mots and salty language augmented by family photographs” (NPR). From the titular New Yorker article about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to essays on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s aperçus and delight in the pleasures of the senses. Between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. Including articles that first appeared in Brick, Playboy, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, and more, as well as an introduction by Mario Batali, A Really Big Lunch offers “sage and succulent essays” for the literary gourmand (Shelf Awareness, starred review).

A Funny Gift for Grammar Lovers NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A fresh and democratic take on language by a gifted teacher." —Mary Norris "[Jovin] never hectors, never finger-points; she enlightens and illuminates. This is lovely work." —Benjamin Dreyer An unconventional guide to the English language drawn from the cross-country adventures of an itinerant grammarian. When Ellen Jovin first walked outside her Manhattan apartment building and set up a folding table with a GRAMMAR TABLE sign, it took about thirty seconds to get her first visitor. Everyone had a question for her. Grammar Table was such a hit—attracting the attention of the New York Times, NPR, and CBS Evening News—that Jovin soon took it on the road, traveling across the US to answer questions from writers, lawyers, editors, businesspeople, students, bickering couples, and anyone else who uses words in this world. In Rebel with a Clause, Jovin tackles what is most on people’s minds, grammatically speaking—from the Oxford comma to the places prepositions can go, the likely lifespan of whom, semicolonphobia, and more. Punctuated with linguistic debates from tiny towns to our largest cities, this grammar romp will delight anyone wishing to polish their prose or revel in our age-old, universal fascination with language.

"Redpath's Public Life of John Brown was his "most popular and influential work" (Knight, Writers of the American Renaissance, 310). While "there is no evidence that Brown asked Redpath to participate in his raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal, there is considerable evidence that Redpath knew many details of Brown's plan. Besides his personal conversations with Brown, Redpath had discussed Brown's intentions with [journalist] Richard Hinton as early as fall 1858 ... [and] knew enough to recruit his friend Merriam for Brown's raiding party ... Redpath's commitment to full black rights never wavered" (McKivigan, 47, xii). In his many-storied career, he played "a role in almost every meaningful reform movement of his day. Along the way he ... worked for the governments of Haiti and the United States, went undercover among the slaves of the Old South, agitated for Irish rights [and] fought in Bleeding Kansas" (Edward E. Baptist)."--Baumannrarebooks.com

This new edition reproduces the text of The Roving Editor together with important supplemental documents and extensive editorial apparatus.