Chris Hedges

Acclaimed journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges is one of the great moral voices of our age. He has the rare combination of decades of experience reporting from conflict zones in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, and the erudition one would expect from a student of Christian ethics and the classics at Harvard University. He prizes the truth over news and facts. And in the pursuit of truth he has risked his career even his life. I never sought to be objective," he writes. How can you be objective about death squads in El Salvador, massacres in Iraq, or Serbian sniper fire that gunned down unarmed civilians including children in Sarajevo? How can you be neutral about the masters and profiteers of war who lie and dissemble to hide the crimes they commit and the profits they make? How can you be objective about human pain? And finally, how can you be objective about those who are responsible for this suffering?" The World As It Is is a collection of Hedges essays originally published by Truthdig, the Webby award-winning progressive news website. Hedges lyrically and fearlessly dissects the most controversial issues of the day: America's wars of self-destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, the decay of American empire (at home and abroad), Israel's ghettoization of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the failure of American liberalism. His essays draw on his extraordinary experiences as a journalist but also his conviction that the centres of power in America have been seized and hijacked by corporations, something the American media pays deference to. Because the press is not concerned with distinguishing truth from news, because it lacks a moral compass, it has become nothing more than courtiers to the elite, shameless hedonists of power and absurd court propagandists."Chris Hedges insists that unless we begin to stand fast around moral imperatives, ones we cannot abandon and must be willing to fight the formal systems of power to advance, we will be complicit in our self-annihilation.

For decades the liberal class was a defence against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of the liberal class, the press, universities, the labour movement, the Democratic Party, and liberal religious institutions,have collapsed. In its absence, the poor, the working class, and even the middle class no longer have a champion. In this searing polemic Chris Hedges indicts liberal institutions, including his former employer, the New York Times , who have distorted their basic beliefs in order to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization, and staggering income inequalities. Hedges argues that the death of the liberal class created a profound vacuum at the heart of American political life. And now speculators, war profiteers, and demagogues, from militias to the Tea Party,are filling the void.

This timely anthology of plays by American and British writers bears witness to the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for combatants and civilians alike and asks what it means to be a citizen in a democracy at war. Sometimes with humour or erotic charge, always with compassion and surprising insight, these contemporary plays return a necessary social edge to the theatre.

They disseminate their ideas on the alternative broadcast networks and through their own publishers and schools. Their intellectual leaders demand the complete dismantling of the secular state; their followers have been roused to a fever pitch of resentment and despair. Describing themselves as true patriots, they wrap themselves in the flag - but all it might take, writes veteran journalist (and Harvard Divinity School graduate) Chris Hedges, is one more national crisis of the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to seize power and reveal themselves for what they really are - the American heirs to Fascism.With a step-by-step breakdown of how they started and where they are, Chris Hedges conducts brilliant on-the-ground reporting and produces a deeply compelling work of cultural and political anthropology and an impassioned, no-holds-barred polemic. American Fascists is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

We now live in two Americas. One,now the minority,functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other,the majority,is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority,which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected,presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this other America," serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death , Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture,attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies,to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

From the New York Times bestselling author of American Fascists and the NBCC finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning comes this timely and compelling work about new atheists: those who attack religion to advance the worst of global capitalism, intolerance and imperial projects. Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, has long been a courageous voice in a world where there are too few. He observes that there are two radical, polarized and dangerous sides to the debate on faith and religion in America: the fundamentalists who see religious faith as their prerogative, and the new atheists who brand all religious belief as irrational and dangerous. Both sides use faith to promote a radical agenda, while the religious majority, those with a commitment to tolerance and compassion as well as to their faith, are caught in the middle. The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather, they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the omnipotence of human reason. I Don't Believe in Atheists critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith. Hedges identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice. Hedges claims that those who have placed blind faith in the morally neutral disciplines of reason and science create idols in their own image -- a sin for either side of the spectrum. He makes an impassioned, intelligent case against religious and secular fundamentalism, which seeks to divide the world into those worthy of moral and intellectual consideration and those who should be condemned, silenced and eradicated. Hedges shatters the new atheists' assault against religion in America, and in doing so, makes way for new, moderate voices to join the debate. This is a book that must be read to understand the state of the battle about faith.

Collateral Damage brings together testimony from the largest number of on the record, named, combat veterans who reveal the disturbing, daily reality of war and occupation in Iraq. Through their eyes, we learn how the mechanics of war lead to the abuse and frequent killing of innocents. They describe convoys of vehicles roaring down roads, smashing into cars, and hitting Iraqi civilians. They detail raids that leave families shot dead in the mayhem. And they describe a battlefield in which troops, untrained to distinguish between combatants and civilians, are authorized to shoot whenever they feel threatened.

An expos of the political ambitions of the Christian right provides a step-by-step breakdown of how the non-secular agenda gained momentum through alternative networks, schools, and publishers; challenges popular opinions that equate extreme Christian ideals with patriotism; and warns readers that another national crisis may enable the Christian right to seize political power. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

A veteran war correspondent and award-winning author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning shares examples from his personal life and career to discuss how specific American social groups can benefit from an adherence to the Ten Commandments. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.