Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War

by Mark Danner

Overview

For the past two decades, Mark Danner has reported from Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans, and the Middle East. His perceptive, award-winning dispatches have not only explored the real consequences of American engagement with the world, but also the relationship between political violence and power. In Stripping Bare the Body, Danner brings together his best reporting from the world's most troubled regions -- from the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti to the tumultuous rise of Aristide; from the onset of the Balkan Wars to the painful fragmentation of Yugoslavia; and finally to the disastrous invasion of Iraq and the radical, destructive legacy of the Bush administration.

At a time when American imperial power is in decline, there has never been a more compelling moment to read these urgent, fiercely intelligent reports.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786744572
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	10/13/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	656
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

A former staff writer for the New Yorker, Mark Danner contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine. The recipient of a National Magazine Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, he teaches at Berkeley and Bard College.

Table of Contents

Foreword Louis Begley xi

Introduction xvii

I Beyond the Mountains 1

La Parenthèse 3

The Legacy 47

The Mountains 84

II The Saddest Story 123

How Not to Stop a War 125

The Cleansing: A Televised Genocide 145

Toward a Policy of Gesture: The Safe Areas 172

Explosion in the Marketplace 203

The Great Betrayal 231

To the Killing Fields 265

Operation Storm and the Cold Peace 301

Coda: Endgame in Kosovo 317

III Marooned in the Cold War 331

IV Lost in the Forever War 363

The Battlefield in the American Mind 365

Struggles of Democracy and Empire 369

How Not to Win a War 372

Delusions in Baghdad 379

Abu Ghraib: Hidden in Plain Sight 392

A Doctrine Left Behind 412

We Are All Torturers Now 416

The Real Election 420

The Secret Way to War 434

Taking Stock of the Forever War 445

The War of the Imagination 466

Voices from the Black Sites 493

Into the Light? Torture, Power, and Us 521

Afterword: The Erotic Pull of the Strange 545

Coda: Words in a Time of War 551

Acknowledgments 565

Notes 567

Selected Bibliography 595

Index 605

Editorial Reviews

from the Foreword by Louis Begley, author of Wartime Lies, About Schmidt and Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters
“The publication of Stripping Bare the Body is a timely act of public service and a literary event, bringing together Mark Danner’s luminously intelligent and engaging narratives and stories from the world's war zones…they are both a moral history of America’s engagement with the world over the last generation and an account of a twenty-three years’ journey through hell on earth by an ideal observer: Danner is endowed with a passion for truth, great physical courage, a muscular writing style, and a heart as big as a barn.”

Dave Eggers, author of Zeitoun and What Is the What
"There's probably no one alive who understands political conflict and upheaval better than Mark Danner, and there is almost certainly no one who writes more eloquently about it. Stripping Bare the Body is an unmitigated masterpiece of reporting and analysis."

Michael Pollan, author, The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma and

In Defense of Food
“The publication of Mark Danner’s Stripping Bear the Body is a big deal — an event. Why? Because Danner’s writing over the past three decades, taken together, forms a definitive, and absolutely riveting, chronicle of the dark side of the post-cold-war world, from Haiti to Abu Ghraib and beyond. No other writer we have combines brilliant and courageous reporting with brilliant and courageous political and moral thinking as Danner does. He is also, first and last, a breathtakingly good writer. For anyone who cares about the fate of our foreign policy and our republic and, indeed, the human condition, Stripping Bare the Body is a touchstone book. “

Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains
"Mark Danner has truly chronicled what Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, called 'the dark places of the earth,' some of which are uncomfortably close to home. He has returned with tales to tell that are vivid, eloquent, heartbreaking and show a steady moral compass. This extraordinary book will long endure, and should be bedside reading for President Obama."

Andrew J. Bacevich, author of

From the Publisher