Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage

by James Marcus (Editor), The Staff of the Columbia Journalism Review (Editor)

Overview

The Columbia Journalism Review's Second Read series features distinguished journalists revisiting key works of reportage. Launched in 2004 by John Palattella, who was then editor of the magazine's book section, the series also allows authors address such ongoing concerns as the conflict between narrative flair and accurate reporting, the legacy of New Journalism, the need for reporters to question their political assumptions, the limitations of participatory journalism, and the temptation to substitute "truthiness" for hard, challenging fact. Representing a wide range of views, Second Read embodies the diversity and dynamism of contemporary nonfiction while offering fresh perspectives on works by Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Rachel Carson, and Gabriel García Márquez, among others. It also highlights pivotal moments and movements in journalism as well as the innovations of award-winning writers.

Essays include Rick Perlstein on Paul Cowan's The Tribes of America; Nicholson Baker on Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year; Dale Maharidge on James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Marla Cone on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring; Ben Yagoda on Walter Bernstein's Keep Your Head Down; Ted Conover on Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones; Jack Shafer on Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Connie Schultz on Michael Herr's Dispatches; Michael Shapiro on Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day; Douglas McCollam on John McPhee's Annals of the Former World; Tom Piazza on Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night; Thomas Mallon on William Manchester's The Death of a President; Miles Corwin on Gabriel García Márquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor; David Ulin on Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem; and Claire Dederer on Betty MacDonald's Anybody Can Do Anything.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231500586
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/08/2011
Series:	Columbia Journalism Review Books
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

James Marcus is deputy editor of Harper's Magazine and author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Review, The Paris Review, and Best American Essays 2009.

The Columbia Journalism Review, founded in 1961 under the auspices of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, is one of the world's most respected resources for media criticism and commentary.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Rick Perlstein on Paul Cowan's The Tribes of America
Nicholson Baker on Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year
Dale Maharidge on James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Robert Lipsyte on Paul Gallico's Farewell to Sport
Marla Cone on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
Ben Yagoda on Walter Bernstein's Keep Your Head Down
Evan Cornog on A. J. Liebling's The Earl of Louisiana
Ted Conover on Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones
Jack Shafer on Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Naresh Fernandes on Palagummi Sainath's Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts
Chris Lehmann on Charles Raw, Bruce Page, and Godfrey Hodgson's Do You Sincerely Want to Be Rich?
Connie Schultz on Michael Herr's Dispatches
Michael Shapiro on Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day
Douglas McCollam on John McPhee's Annals of the Former World
Scott Sherman on Marshall Frady's Wallace
Gal Beckerman on Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart
John Maxwell Hamilton on Vincent Sheean's Personal History
Tom Piazza on Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night
Thomas Mallon on William Manchester's The Death of a President
Miles Corwin on Gabriel García Márquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
David Ulin on Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Justin Peters on Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure
Claire Dederer on Betty MacDonald's Anybody Can Do Anything
Contributors

What People are Saying About This

Vivian Gornick

A deeply satisfying collection of reflections on nonfiction writing. The result is a wealth of history exciting to reencounter and a richness of matured analysis that is equally stirring.

— Vivian Gornick, essayist and critic

Editorial Reviews

A book of journalism about books of journalism that are worth reading twice? The essays here honor their subject in the best possible way: they are so good, so rich, and so finely written, they deserve to be read again.

David Hajdu

Second Read carries value for any writer, whether oft-published or a novice or in between.

Writer - Steve Weinberg

Let us now praise forgotten nonfiction. It is the fate of great journalism, perhaps, to fade away just a few decades after appearing. Yet that leaves for us the pleasures of rediscovery, which the essays collected in Second Read bring off in superb style.

Thomas Frank

contemporary journalists offer fresh looks at the work of previous generations in this rich collection.Daily News

Daily News