Lessons from a dark time

Resumen del libro

In this rich collection, bestselling author Adam Hochschild has selected and updated over two dozen essays and pieces of reporting from his long career. Threaded through them all is his concern for social justice and the people who have fought for it. The articles here range from a California gun show to a Finnish prison, from a Congolese center for rape victims to the ruins of gulag camps in the Soviet Arctic, from a stroll through construction sites with an ecologically pioneering architect in India to a day on the campaign trail with Nelson Mandela.

Hochschild also talks about the writers he loves, from Mark Twain to John McPhee, and explores such far-reaching topics as why so much history is badly written, what bookshelves tell us about their owners, and his front-row seat for the shocking revelation in the 1960s that the CIA had been secretly controlling dozens of supposedly independent organizations. With the skills of a journalist, the knowledge of a historian, and the heart of an activist, Hochschild shares the stories of people who took a stand against despotism, spoke out against unjust wars and government surveillance, and dared to dream of a better and more just world.

Biografía del autor

Adam Hochschild (Nueva York, 1942) vive en San Francisco y ejerce la docencia como profesor de redacción en la Graduate School of Journalism de la Universidad de California en Berkeley, y durante el curso 1997-1998 fue profesor Fulbright en India. Ha colaborado en varias revistas norteamericanas, entre las que destacan The New Yorker,The New York Review of Books y The New York Times Magazine. Le concedieron el premio de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes y las Letras y fue finalista del National Book Critics Circle Award. También es autor de Half the way home: A memoir of father and son, The mirror at midnight: A South African journey, The unquiet ghost: Russians remember Stalin, Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, portraits, travels, entre otros.