Whether planning your own trip to Chechnya, or planning someone else's, you'll be equipped with the all-inclusive travel reportboth of our "Travel" and "Points of Interest" reports rolled into one.

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A comprehensive study of the background to the Russian military invasion of Chechnya in 1994.

Some of the bravest actions of journalists are unknown, obscured by the passage of time, hidden by veils of anonymity or buried by systematic repression. Profiles in Journalistic Courage corrects this imbalance. With few exceptions, the stories told in this collection are unfamiliar. In the words of Richard Whelan on Robert Capa's vision of the Spanish Civil War, these tales are drawn from the edge of things. Most of the people highlighted here are journalists who worked on the margins of popularity, who blazed new and solitary paths, and who left fleeting legacies.Courageous journalists were not always thanked for their pioneering efforts. Jealousy, political disagreements, and differing conceptions of journalism sometimes fueled criticism of some of those dealt with in this volume. To complicate the subject further, brave journalists do not always act for reasons that win popularity or acclaim. Actions with laudable consequences are sometimes the result of egoism, stubbornness and ignorance, no less than selflessness, prudence, and principle. These psychological dimensions are not avoided in these profiles.In "Yesterday" David Copeland examines the tangled legacy of the trial of John Peter Zenger. Graham Hodges unearths the story of David Ruggles, an African-American journalist and abolitionist. Pamela Newkirk recalls the life and work of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Pierre Albert explores the journalism of the French Resistance. Bernard L. Stein and Hank Klibanoff describe the work and motives of the civil rights movement. The volume covers the journalism of commitment from Northern Ireland to Native American tribes. It closes with an extended essay by James Boylan on varied perspectives on different aspects of courage in journalism, from the capacity to resist threats to the courage to tell people what they may not want to hear or read.

Chechnya Diary is a story about "the story" of the war in Chechnya, the "rogue republic" that attempted to secede from the Russian Federation at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Specifically, it is the story of the Samashki Massacre, a symbol of the Russian brutality that was employed to crush Chechen resistance. Thomas Goltz is a member of the exclusive journalistic cadre of compulsive, danger-addicted voyeurs who court death to get the story. But in addition to providing a tour through the convoluted Soviet and then post-Soviet nationalities policy that led to the bloodbath in Chechnya, Chechnya Diary is part of a larger exploration of the role (and impact) of the media in conflict areas. And at its heart, Chechnya Diary is the story of Hussein, the leader of the local resistance in the small town that bears the brunt of the massacre as it is drawn into war. This is a deeply personal book, a first person narrative that reads like an adventure but addresses larger theoretical issues ranging from the history of ethnic/nationalities in the USSR and the Russian Federation to journalistic responsibility in crisis zones. Chechnya Diary is a crossover work that offers both the historical context and a ground-level view of a complex and brutal war.

Offering an unflinching portrait of life in Daghestan and Chechnya and focusing on its girls and women, this book presents the north Caucasus today through the eyes of two Poles, an anthropologist and a journalist, who travelled there amid a locally rooted but newly assertive Islamic revivalism. Shadowed by Russian secret police, the authors participate in Muslim rites in villages which penalize those caught smoking or drinking, even in their own homes; spend time with polygamous families; talk to human rights and democracy activists whose names feature on hit lists; and to young people about religion, polygamy, prostitution and sex. They also track down 'Wahhabis' (known locally as 'devils') who conceal their religious affiliations for fear of persecution. In Daghestan the authors encounter two Sufi religious leaders, both of whom were later murdered, and in Grozny, young men who survived torture but were forced to commit perjury. They hang out with young women 'encouraged' by the Chechen regime to 'conduct themselves morally' for the good of the nation; accompany girls on dates; and find out from eighteen-year-old divorcées why it's better to share a bed with another wife than have no husband at all.