Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

$20.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Ray: "Riveting. Compelling. The story of how Ronan Farrow held his ground against the powerful media establishment, unprincipled lawyers, public relations spinmasters, spies, to expose the sexual predations of Hollywood mogul Henry Weinstein. An Australian-born media executive tried to stop the book fro m being sold in Australia. Read Catch and Kill, and you’ll be glad he failed."   In a dramatic account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost. In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance that could not be explained - until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood, to Washington, and beyond. This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability and silence victims of abuse - and it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement. Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power - and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture. ...Show more

The Other Side by Warwick Roger

$14.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand | Reading Level: very good

Changing Times: The Story of a New Zealand Country Newspaper by Kit de Latour

$25.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand | Reading Level: very good

In 2005 the Rodney Times was bought by Fairfax New Zealand Ltd,thus ending a 104-year era for New Zealand's oldest family-owned newspaper. For the last 88 of those years, the family was that of William Thomson Rauparaha Cook and his equally determined descendants. Ex Rodney Times editor Kit de Latour te lls the fascinating story of a New Zealand coutnry newspaper from its Australian founder, Alfred Walter Charles de La Roche - he was cold-shouldered out of the vigorous pioneer town of Warkworth by the eldest son of the local captain of industry - through to the present, when the proud independent was absorbed into the corporate publishing fold. ...Show more

Reporting - Writings from the New Yorker by David Remnick

$16.00 NZD

Category: Media | Reading Level: very good

Portraits, book reviews, world news, commentary and reportage from the editor of the The New Yorker.

End Times - The Death of the Fourth Estate by Alexander Cockburn; Jeffrey St. Clair

$14.00 NZD

Category: Media | Series: Counterpunch Ser. | Reading Level: very good

We can no longer trust that our journalists are reporting the news without underlying corporate or governmental agendas. The US government deregulates radio and right-wing Clear Channel gobbles up available frequencies. Journalists are embedded and the war in Iraq is a noble one. Whether the information is fabricated, one-sided, or illegally obtained, recent scandals like those involving Judy Miller and Robert Woodward only serve to underline the point that journalistic integrity is not what it used to be.Enter Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, who have not only kept the tradition of muckraking alive, but have reinvented and reinvigorated it for our times. Their newest effort, End Times, presents a detailed scrutiny of the "quality" print press and leading corporate media in the last decade, detailing a disastrous sequence of misrepresentation, suppression, ignorance, and willful embrace of the government's agenda. These essays trace the impending disintegration of what is now "old media"--the traditional and now potentially tainted sources of our daily news--and looks toward the emergence of an entirely new landscape of mass communications: one that includes a more populist approach to information dissemination. ...Show more

Equal: A Story of Women, Men & Money by Carrie Gracie

$12.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Equal is an inspiring, personal and campaigning book about how we should and can fight for equal pay and other kinds of equality in the workplace, by former BBC China editor Carrie Gracie. Gracie joined a group of high-profile BBC women who challenged the national broadcaster over equal pay after enforc ed disclosures revealed huge gaps between top men and women. Gracie had insisted on equal pay at the time of her China posting, and after trying with other BBC women to put things right through negotiation, she eventually resigned her post complaining publicly of a 'secretive and illegal' pay culture. Her protest triggered a parliamentary inquiry into BBC pay, and after a protracted internal complaints process, she won an apology from the BBC and a settlement which she donated to the Fawcett Society. In Equal Gracie will tell her own story, explore why it is often so hard for women to assert their value in the workplace and give practical guidance on what women, men and employers can do to achieve equality for this and future generations of women. ...Show more

Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality by Neal Gabler

$10.00 NZD

Category: Media | Reading Level: good

"A thoughtful, in places chilling, account of the way entertainment values have hollowed out American life." --"The New York Times Book Review" From one of America's most original cultural critics and the author of Winchell, the story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, glamour, and melo drama has turned everything of importance-from news and politics to religion and high culture-into one vast public entertainment. Neal Gabler calls them "lifies," those blockbusters written in the medium of life that dominate the media and the national conversation for weeks, months, even years: the death of Princess Diana, the trial of O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton. Real Life as Entertainment is hardly a new phenomenon, but the movies, and now the new information technologies, have so accelerated it that it is now the reigning popular art form. How this came to pass, and just what it means for our culture and our personal lives, is the subject of this witty, concerned, and sometimes eye-opening book. ...Show more

Postmodern After-Images - A Reader in Film, Television and Video by Peter Brooker; Will Brooker

$20.00 NZD

Category: Media | Series: An\Arnold Publication Ser.

This reader examines familiar and fresh images of postmodernism, and looks forward to what is to follow, combining now classic statements from Frederic Jameson, Barbara Creed, Umberto Eco and E. Ann Kaplan with new perspectives on youth, gender and ethnicity. The introduction and headnotes draw out comm on themes between contributors or set them in debate, and together with two new essays by the editors, extend discussion beyond the foundational sites of Blade Runner, Twin Peaks and Madonna to include Vincent Vega, the Gulf War, and the networks of the worldwide web. ...Show more

Screen Media : Analysing film and television by Jane Stadler; Kelly McWilliam

$20.00 NZD

Category: Media

Presenting a manner of thinking "on both sides of the screen,” this review offers screen enthusiasts the analytical and theoretical vocabulary required to articulate responses to film and television. It provides guidelines for developing the skills to understand and analyze how and why a screen text was shot, scored, and edited in a particular way, as well as for considering what impact those production choices might have on the audience. Production techniques and approaches to screen analysis are presented in a historical context. Other topics discussed include recent technological developments; the implications of increasing convergence of film and television technologies; and the aesthetics, narrative, realism, genre, celebrity, and cult media of global screen culture. Featuring extensive international examples, this is an ideal introduction to critical engagement with film and television. ...Show more

The Real War - The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War with a New Essay by Jonathan Schell

$10.00 NZD

Category: Military | Reading Level: very good

Jonathan Schell's extraordinary on-the-scene writing about Vietnam has stood the test of time in our continuing attempt to understand how and why the United States went to war-and how and why it lost. In "The Village of Ben Suc" written "with skill that many a veteran reporter will envy" (New York Times ), Schell recounts how American forces destroyed a village caught up in the largest American military operation of the war-he flies into Ben Suc in the attack helicopters, follows the assault on the village, and describes the fate of the villages after they have been taken to refugee camps. In "Military Half," Schell describes the destruction of two entire provinces in South Vietnam by American bombing and ground operations-he flies in the air-control planes that guide the bombing and provides firsthand accounts of the runs and their results. In "Real War," Schell offers a personal look back at the war he reported decades before. The Real War is without equal in re-creating the sights, the sounds, and the feel of Vietnam. "If, years from now, Americans are willing to read any books about the war, let them be The Village of Ben Suc and The Military Half by Jonathan Schell. They tell everything." -Gloria Emerson ...Show more

Bylines: Memoirs of a War Correspondent by Lachie McDonald

$14.00 NZD

Category: Military | Reading Level: very good

Kingsley - The Life, Letters and Diaries of Kingsley Martin by C. H. Rolph

$20.00 NZD

Category: Media | Reading Level: very good