Books published by publisher The Dial Press, New York

The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave?Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals the heretofore-untold story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Drawing upon hundreds of unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with senior American, British, and Iraqi officials, Muttitt exposes the plans and preparations that were in place to shape policies in favor of American and British energy interests. We follow him through a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, reneged promises, and abuses of power; we also see how Iraqis struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of their dysfunctional government and rising levels of violence. Through their stories, we begin to see a very different Iraq from the one our politicians have told us about.In light of the Arab revolutions, the war in Libya, and renewed threats against Iran, Fuel on the Fire provides a vital guide to the lessons from Iraq and of the global consequences of America’s persistent oil addiction.

The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave?Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals the heretofore-untold story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Drawing upon hundreds of unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with senior American, British, and Iraqi officials, Muttitt exposes the plans and preparations that were in place to shape policies in favor of American and British energy interests. We follow him through a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, reneged promises, and abuses of power; we also see how Iraqis struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of their dysfunctional government and rising levels of violence. Through their stories, we begin to see a very different Iraq from the one our politicians have told us about.In light of the Arab revolutions, the war in Libya, and renewed threats against Iran, Fuel on the Fire provides a vital guide to the lessons from Iraq and of the global consequences of America’s persistent oil addiction.

A U.S. senator, leading the fight against money in politics, chronicles the long shadow corporate power has cast over our democracy In Captured, U.S. Senator and former federal prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse offers an eye-opening take on what corporate influence looks like today from the Senate Floor, adding a first-hand perspective to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. Americans know something is wrong in their government. Senator Whitehouse combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide the first hands-on, comprehensive explanation of what's gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. Captured reveals an original oversight by the Founders, and shows how and why corporate power has exploited that vulnerability: to strike fear in elected representatives who don’t “get right” by threatening million-dollar "dark money" election attacks (a threat more effective and less expensive than the actual attack); to stack the judiciary—even the Supreme Court—in "business-friendly" ways; to "capture” the administrative agencies meant to regulate corporate behavior; to undermine the civil jury, the Constitution's last bastion for ordinary citizens; and to create a corporate "alternate reality" on public health and safety issues like climate change. Captured shows that in this centuries-long struggle between corporate power and individual liberty, we can and must take our American government back into our own hands.

A searing indictment of US strategy in Afghanistan from a distinguished military leader and West Point military historian—“A remarkable book” (National Review). In 2008, Col. Gian Gentile exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals with an article titled “Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities,” that appeared in World Politics Review. While the years of US strategy in Afghanistan had been dominated by the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN), Gentile and a small group of dissident officers and defense analysts began to question the necessity and efficacy of COIN—essentially armed nation-building—in achieving the United States’ limited core policy objective in Afghanistan: the destruction of Al Qaeda. Drawing both on the author’s experiences as a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War and his research into the application of counterinsurgency in a variety of historical contexts, Wrong Turn is a brilliant summation of Gentile’s views of the failures of COIN, as well as a trenchant reevaluation of US operations in Afghanistan. “Gentile is convinced that Obama’s ‘surge’ in Afghanistan can’t work. . . . And, if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats . . . who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare . . . may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board.” —The New Republic

A beautifully illustrated edition of Studs Terkel's timeless portraits of America's jazz legends, for readers of all ages.Studs Terkel's first book, Giants of Jazz, is the master interviewer's unique tribute to America's jazz greats, now available in an affordable paperback edition with the original illustrations and discography.The thirteen profiles in this "luminous" (Jazzwise) collection weave together stories of the individual jazz musicians' lives with the history of the jazz era, and the music's evolution from the speakeasies of New York to the concert halls of the world's greatest cities. Terkel—a lifelong fan and friend of many of these legends—uses firsthand interviews with artists such as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker to tell the human stories behind the giants who shaped this uniquely American music form. Some of the many fascinating details Terkel relates include Joe Oliver's favorite meal, Fats Waller's 1932 rendezvous in Paris with eminent organist Marcel Dupré, Dizzy Gillespie's childhood trip to a pawnshop to buy his first horn, and the origin of Billie Holiday's nickname. Paperback with French flaps, thirteen b/w illustrations.

In writing his Self-Portrait of Black America, anthropologist, folklorist, and humanist John Gwaltney went in search of “Core Black People”—the ordinary men and women who make up black America—and asked them to define their culture. Their responses, recorded in Drylongso, are to American oral history what blues and jazz are to American music. If the people in William H. Johnson's and Jacob Lawrence's paintings could talk, this is what they would say.

NOW IN PAPERBACK The "gripping" (New York Times) and "Hitchcockian"(Publishers Weekly) story of how a nurse, a car dealership worker, and a forensic expert took on the nation’s largest banks A Kirkus Reviews and The Week best book of the year, David Dayen’s Chain of Title is a riveting work that recalls A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, and Flash Boys, recounting how three ordinary Floridians—a car dealership worker, a cancer nurse, and an insurance fraud specialist—helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history, challenged the most powerful institutions in America, and—for a brief moment—brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Harnessing the power of the Internet, they revealed how the financial crisis and subsequent recession were fundamentally based upon a series of frauds that kicked millions out of their homes because of false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. As Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi noted: "Chain of Title is a sweeping work of investigative journalism that traces the arc of a criminally underreported story in America, the collapse of the rule of law in the home mortgage industry."

A moving portrait of how black Americans have spoken out against injustice―with speeches by Thurgood Marshall, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and more. In “full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul”, this unique anthology collects the transcribed speeches of the twentieth century’s leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures, many never before available in printed form (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). From an 1895 speech by Booker T. Washington to Julian Bond’s sharp assessment of school segregation on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board in 2004, the collection captures a powerful tradition of oratory―by political activists, civil rights organizers, celebrities, and religious leaders―going back more than a century. Including the text of each speech with an introduction placing it in historical context, Say It Plain is a remarkable record―from the back-to-Africa movement to the civil rights era and the rise of black nationalism and beyond―conveying a struggle for freedom and a challenge to America to live up to its democratic principles. Includes speeches by: Mary McLeod BethuneJulian BondStokely CarmichaelShirley ChisholmLouis FarrakhanMarcus GarveyJesse JacksonMartin Luther King Jr.Thurgood MarshallBooker T. WashingtonWalter White

Can you combine justice with forgiveness?In April 1996 an extraordinary process began in South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, under its chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu, held its first public hearings to investigate over thirty years of human rights violations under apartheid. The Commission had been founded in the belief that truth was the only means by which the people of South Africa could come to a common understanding of their past, and that this understanding was necessary if the country was to forge a new national identity in the future. In the first two years more than 20,000 victims made statements to the commissioners and, encouraged by the possibility of amnesty, some 7,000 perpetrators came forward to confess their crimes. The TRC hearings took place in township halls, churches and civic centres all over South Africa. In many cases victims and perpetrators sat in the same room to give evidence.Jillian Edelstein spent four years travelling back and forth between London and South Africa attending hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission up and down the country. She set up her camera in makeshift studios in rooms next door to where the hearings were held and visited people at home in the townships or deep in the countryside to take their portraits and listen to their stories. What she brought back was a collective portrait of a country which, between the Sixties and the Nineties, was engaged in a vicious struggle in which thousands of people were abducted, tortured and killed. This book tells some of their stories. It is unique in that it puts faces to the personal testimonies of both victims and perpetrators. In the most direct way it documents one of the most important experiments in democratic justice attempted in the 20th century.

In her bestselling books Blue Gold and Blue Covenant, world-renowned water activist Maude Barlow exposed the battle for ownership of our dwindling water supply and the emergence of an international, grassroots-led movement to reclaim water as a public good. Since then, the United Nations has recognized access to water as a basic human right—but there is still much work to be done to stem this growing crisis. In this major new book, Barlow draws on her extensive experience and insight to lay out a set of key principles that show the way forward to what she calls a “water-secure and water-just world.” Not only does she reveal the powerful players even now impeding the recognition of the human right to water, she argues that water must not become a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. Focusing on solutions, she includes stories of struggle and resistance from marginalized communities, as well as government policies that work for both people and the planet. At a time when climate change has moved to the top of the national agenda and when the stage is being set for unprecedented drought, mass starvation, and the migration of millions of refugees in search of water, Blue Future is an urgent call to preserve our most valuable resource for generations to come.

Over the past decade, women’s basketball has exploded onto the national sports scene. WNBA and NCAA television ratings have skyrocketed; movies, magazines, and clothing lines showcase female players. But as the authors of Shattering the Glass show, women’s basketball has a much longer history, reaching back over a century of struggle, liberation, and gutsy play.Shattering the Glass offers a sweeping chronicle of women’s basketball in the United States, from its invention in the late nineteenth century to its dominant position in sports today. Offering vivid portraits of forgotten heroes and contemporary stars, it also provides a broader perspective on the history of the sport, exploring its relationship to changing ideas of womanhood, efforts to expand women’s economic and political rights, and definitions of sexual equality.Based on original interviews with players, coaches, administrators, broadcasters, and extensively illustrated, Shattering the Glass provides a moving, gritty view of the game on and off the court, and an empowering story of the generations of women who have shaped women’s basketball.

Colonel Gian Gentile’s 2008 article “Misreading the Surge” in World Politics Review first exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals that has since been playing out in strategy sessions at the Pentagon, in classrooms at military academies, and on the pages of the New York Times. While the past years of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan have been dominated by the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN), Gentile and a small group of dissident officers and defense analysts have questioned the necessity and efficacy of COIN—essentially armed nation-building—in achieving the United States’ limited core policy objective in Afghanistan: the destruction of Al Qaeda. Drawing both on the author’s experiences as a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War and his research into the application of counterinsurgency in a variety of historical contexts, Wrong Turn is a brilliant summation of Gentile’s views of the failures of COIN, as well as a searing reevaluation of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan. As the issue of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan inevitably rises to the top of the national agenda, Wrong Turn will be a major new touchstone for what went wrong and a vital new guide to the way forward. Note: the ideas in this book are the author’s alone, not the Department of Defense’s.