Jeremy Scahill

This is by any measure one of the high spots of investigative journalism over the past decade; it is comprehensive in every sense: exposition, narrative, and documentation, and Jeremy Scahill is a solid journalistic prose stylist. You won't find, I suspect, a more exhaustive study of private mercenary armies, their role in the overall corporate defense contracting infrastructure, or the threat they pose to our democratic republic. At the time of this book's publication, I saw Jeremy Scahill interviewed on one news program or another several times, and each time his interlocuter had to ask why organizations like Blackwater threaten democracy. The strength of this book--and Mr. Scahill as a writer--rests in the fact that while it provides you facts, it never presents conclusions. The facts themselves perform that task, which is what we ought to expect from our best journalists. Jeremy Scahill joins their ranks with this book.… (meer)