The Columbia Journalism Review's Second Read series features distinguished journalists revisiting key works of reportage. Launched in 2004 by John Palattella, who was then editor of the magazine's book section, the series also allows authors address such ongoing concerns as the conflict between narrative flair and accurate reporting, the legacy of New Journalism, the need for reporters to question their political assumptions, the limitations of participatory journalism, and the temptation to substitute "truthiness" for hard, challenging fact. Representing a wide range of views, Second Read embodies the diversity and dynamism of contemporary nonfiction while offering fresh perspectives on works by Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Rachel Carson, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others. It also highlights pivotal moments and movements in journalism as well as the innovations of award-winning writers. Essays include Rick Perlstein on Paul Cowan's The Tribes of America; Nicholson Baker on Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year; Dale Maharidge on James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Marla Cone on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring; Ben Yagoda on Walter Bernstein's Keep Your Head Down; Ted Conover on Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones; Jack Shafer on Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Connie Schultz on Michael Herr's Dispatches; Michael Shapiro on Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day; Douglas McCollam on John McPhee's Annals of the Former World; Tom Piazza on Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night; Thomas Mallon on William Manchester's The Death of a President; Miles Corwin on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor; David Ulin on Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem; and Claire Dederer on Betty MacDonald's Anybody Can Do Anything.

A deeply satisfying collection of reflections on nonfiction writing. The result is a wealth of history exciting to reencounter and a richness of matured analysis that is equally stirring. -- Vivian Gornick, essayist and critic

About the Author
James Marcus is deputy editor of Harper's Magazine and author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Review, The Paris Review, and Best American Essays 2009. The Columbia Journalism Review, founded in 1961 under the auspices of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, is one of the world's most respected resources for media criticism and commentary.

Reviews
Let us now praise forgotten nonfiction. It is the fate of great journalism, perhaps, to fade away just a few decades after appearing. Yet that leaves for us the pleasures of rediscovery, which the essays collected in Second Read bring off in superb style. -- Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew and What's the Matter with Kansas? A book of journalism about books of journalism that are worth reading twice? The essays here honor their subject in the best possible way: they are so good, so rich, and so finely written, they deserve to be read again. -- David Hajdu, music critic for The New Republic and professor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism contemporary journalists offer fresh looks at the work of previous generations in this rich collection.Daily News Daily News Second Read carries value for any writer, whether oft-published or a novice or in between. -- Steve Weinberg Writer



Book Information
ISBN 9780231159319
Author James Marcus
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press