Newsweek Insights
Скачать книги из серии Newsweek InsightsThinking With the Blood
This compelling short-read recounts award-winning author and correspondent Owen Matthews’ journey across war-torn Ukraine in the summer of 2014. But not only is this a professional journalist's account: it is an insightful and personal journey into the history of this blood-soaked land of curses and new beginnings.
Matthews retraces the roots of his mother’s tragedy-struck Ukrainian-born family and discovers that "though we believe we think with our rational mind, part of us – a deep part – thinks with the blood.” He understands this country in a way few other foreign correspondents can, and tells the story of Europe’s latest civil war through the eyes of an eccentric cast of participants, from a sic-fi novelist turned general in the rebel capital of Donetsk to a the Jewish leader of an Ukrainian ultranationalist party in Kiev.
It is an extraordinary insight into the disturbing political events of 2014 that tore Ukraine apart and sent Russia spiraling into a vortex of reactionary nationalism. Matthews warns of the long term ramifications for not just for the people of the region, but for all of us in the rest of the world too.
Once Upon a Jihad
Published in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in Paris in January 2015, Alex Perry's latest book examines the the question of what it is that drives young people to reject the society in which they have lived and been educated, in the name of radical causes.
Perry follows a group of young British muslims, radicalised through contacts made online, and shows how their normal teenage vulnerabilities are exploited with catastrophic consequences. A journey that begins at home with «looking the part» ends in martyrdom in a far away city. Perry shows how the binary positions adopted by jihadis and the countries increasingly frightened by them, have opened up a chasm of misunderstanding in which the truth has been lost. Both sides tell elaborate myths, about themselves and the world, which make any engagement with the other all but impossible. They speak past each other not with each other.
Perry believes it is the purpose of all journalism to pierce the murk, expose the fantasists and elucidate some truth. Mostly that’s a fairly civilised process but, he points out, the Charlie Hebdo assassinations remind us of the seriousness of the task. Because stories can, and do, kill.
The Descent of Man
Why do so many men choose to die? Across Europe, men are four times more likely than women to die by suicide, a disparity that is increasing. More British men die by suicide each year than have British soldiers died in all wars since 1945. Yet suicide is a killer that too often remains obscured beneath a layer of shame and innuendo, its causes misunderstood and ignored.
In his latest ebook, Finlay Young lifts the lid on this quiet killer of thousands, taking the reader on a twisting journey through the history, psychology, sociology, and chemistry of male suicide. From those who have tried to kill themselves to those who try and stop them, from the old to the young and those in middle-age now most at risk, Young sensitively tells the personal stories of a wide cast of men he met on his quest to understand the ultimate question: why?
The Descent of Man is a nuanced exploration of a harrowing subject, one that explores the core assumptions of what it even means to be a man in the 21st century.
The Club
English Football has over 92 fully professional clubs. Players in the Premier League teams now earn an average salary of £2.3 million per annum. Meanwhile, on the bottom rung, entire squads make less in a year than Wayne Rooney takes home in a month. An army of young players sacrifice their education and prospects outside of sport for the dream of football success, despite that fact that 85% will be released from their contracts within five years.
Simon Akam's book shows what the beautiful game really means for most players.
Luton Town Football Club played a vital role in bringing this book to life by opening their doors and allowing a Newsweek Europe journalist to embed with them: a generous act, which has resulted in a remarkable glimpse into life in a lower league club, and the community around it.
The Aftermath
In the summer of 2014 a 50-day conflict between Gaza and Israel saw the loss of over 2,200 Gazan lives, including scores of families classified as «erased». The world looked on with a mixture of horror and indifference, and the debate about the rights and wrongs polarised around intractable pro-Israeli or pro-Gazan positions.
Sarah Helm had worked in Gaza during the 1990s as a correspondent covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, developing a deep respect for the people living there. In the years after she left, violent clashes began to make the events she had reported on look like mere skirmishes. During a period of relative quiet, Sarah decided to go back to Gaza, and see for herself what had become of the place she reported from two decades ago. This eBook is her personal account of what she found …