A behind-the-scenes look at how government seduces the free press into abandoning hard investigation and insight. Former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Parry calls on the public, press, and Congress to reassume their bipartisan responsibility to challenge Conventional Wisdom and uncover the truth.

Often going against the grain of Washington’s so-called conventional wisdom, Robert Parry covered the most consequential issues facing the country during his five decades as a journalist – from the Vietnam War to Iran-Contra to the Iraq War to Russiagate, stories that shaped the course of contemporary American history. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 and the recipient of numerous awards – including the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984, I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence in 2015, and the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2017 – Parry earned a reputation as a tenacious reporter committed to telling the truth without fear or favor. This compilation of Parry’s writings traces his development from a student activist to a beat reporter to an investigative journalist and historian, shedding light on how he came to believe that the Washington press corps had lost its way and that building independent media is essential to save the republic. More than a simple collection of articles by an iconoclastic journalist, however, this volume is an illuminating history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries – a troubling recent past that Parry meticulously chronicles through in-depth research and compelling storytelling. What will come into focus as the reader turns these pages is an at times shocking level of corruption and wrongdoing at the highest levels of government, enabled by a steady deterioration of the U.S. media’s commitment to providing an honest accounting of the events shaping our world. The reader, perhaps, will come to the same conclusions that Robert Parry did: that the media has become a threat to democracy and one of the most important tasks that exists today is to build a new infrastructure for conveying information – one that is honest, independent, and incorruptible.

In this remarkable and engaging book, William LeoGrande offers the first comprehensive history of U.S. foreign policy toward Central America in the waning years of the Cold War. From the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the outbreak of El Salvador's civil war in the late 1970s to the final regional peace settlements negotiated a decade later, he chronicles the dramatic struggles--in Washington and Central America--that shaped the region's destiny. For good or ill, LeoGrande argues, Central America's fate hinged on decisions that were subject to intense struggles among, and within, Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House--decisions over which Central Americans themselves had little influence. Like the domestic turmoil unleashed by Vietnam, he says, the struggle over Central America was so divisive that it damaged the fabric of democratic politics at home. It inflamed the tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch over control of foreign policy and ultimately led to the Iran-contra affair, the nation's most serious political crisis since Watergate.

From the author of Overworld, America at Night reads like a thriller, but is "the kind of story about which fiction writers can only dream." (The New York Times) When the Department of Homeland Security suspects that two former CIA operatives are at the center of plot involving money laundering and the funding of Al Qaeda—and when their supposedly comprehensive database turns up little to no information on either man—it takes former covert operative Larry Kolb to crack the case and foil the plan. But when Kolb begins to connect the dots, he realizes something even more sinister is afoot, and that he's on to the biggest possible con with the highest political stakes. Kolb shows us how one well-informed individual did what all of our security agencies could not: trail two brilliant covert political operatives through a labyrinth of disguised identities and dark crimes to expose corruption at the highest levels.

Certainly all presidents and prime ministers have engaged in spin to a certain extent, but in the past the media - and the public - checked the extent to which our leaders were able to fudge the truth. However, President Bush has repeatedly used deception, told outright lies, and rewritten history to sell his policy agenda. And thanks to one of the most aggressive public relations teams ever assembled, he has been able to get away with it since he began his campaign. In the wake of September 11, the administration has taken its questionable conduct to a new level by attempting to intimidate critics and has tried to connect virtually every policy initiative to the war on terrorism. Bush has used the same tactics to mislead the public on a wide range of other major policy initiatives, from the environment to homeland security to Social Security - all with little scepticism from the media.

Weber provides an invigorating analysis of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America through the lens of queer theory, one that is certain to spark controversy and debate. She probes popular ideas of how the United States is personified, arguing that a degree of queerness is both absent and present in these perceptions. Weber critically engages the popular image of American culture. Reviewing U.S. military interventions in Latin America from 1959 to 1994, Weber posits that American foreign policy is a set of strategic displacements of castration anxiety. She brilliantly illuminates the cultural anxieties and imperatives that shape foreign policy. Utilizing humor and critical logic, she provides a fascinating perspective on American foreign relations in the Caribbean.