The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American IdealsJane Mayer
“The Dark Side is the one indispensable narrative, as yet, of what really happened when the George W. Bush administration decided to use torture as a weapon in the war on terror. Coaxing top-secret information in defiance of a clamped-down White House, the New Yorker writer Jane Mayer infiltrated the furthest shadowy reaches of the intelligence community to reveal in shocking, meticulous detail how the government’s highest officials insisted that torture was necessary to strengthen national security. Mayer’s intrepid reporting on the story forcefully revealed the price paid by the United States for abandoning its first principles in the fight against terrorism, making this gracefully told chronicle of governmental misconduct a fitting heir to the classic investigative reporting of J. Anthony Lukas.”
2009 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Finalists
The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11Edward Alden
From Publishers Weekly
Former Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, Alden provides a thoughtful and balanced assessment of border security and immigration policies before and after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, demonstrating how more stringent security can damage the U.S. economy by discouraging trade, tourism and an influx of bright minds and diligent workers. The author's vignettes make what could be a dry read engaging and urgent. Alden's policy prescriptions are book-ended with the story of Dr. Faiz Bhora, a leading heart surgeon from Pakistan who had trouble returning to the States to resume his work because of visa problems and was eventually caught in the post-9/11 Justice Department crackdown on visa applications by citizens of Muslim countries. Alden points out that the Department of Homeland Security concedes that most of its counterterrorism funds are being poured into securing and controlling the border with Mexico and makes a persuasive case that immigration enforcement and counterterrorism are two different things, and for either to be effective they need to be separated.
Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the GeneMasha Gessen,
From Publishers Weekly
This energetic but unfocused account awkwardly merges several strands: the author's experience with the threat of breast cancer, discussions of genetic inheritance in Jewish families and a look at how the ability to test for genetic predispositions to various diseases is changing lives. With a family history of breast cancer, journalist Gessen (Dead Again: The Russian Intelligentsia After Communism) was not surprised to learn she had inherited a deleterious mutation in the BRCA1 gene, one of two genes known to be linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The BRCA1 mutation was first discovered in Jewish women, a compact population with a higher-than-average breast cancer rate. Gessen describes her narrow options, with nondirective counseling steering her toward prophylactic removal of her breasts and ovaries. Then she jumps the track to talk about Dr. Henry Lynch, who, in 1966, first suggested that predisposition to cancer might be hereditary. Gessen also covers Huntington's disease, maple syrup disease among Old Order Mennonites, eugenics and how a genetic testing program is affecting marital choices for some Orthodox Jews. Gessen covers a fair amount of ground, but in a haphazard fashion. The book's strongest parts are on genetics and heredity in the Jewish community.
