Blackwater

Jeremy Scahill is an unembedded, international journalist. He has covered the war in Iraq; the downfall of Milosevic's government in Serbia; the suppression of oil protests in the Niger Delta; and the use of mercenaries in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. He was among the only western reporters to gain access to the Abu Ghraib prison when Saddam Hussein was in power. Scahill has won numerous journalism awards, included a prestigious Lannan Foundation fellowship for Blackwater, which is his first book.

Blackwater is the utterly gripping and explosive story of how the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so loyal to far right causes it constitutes nothing less than a Republican Guard. The most important and chilling book about the death throes of U.S. democracy you will read in years and a triumph of investigative reporting. -- Naomi Klein, author No Logo Meticulously researched and fascinating ... Scahill does a fine job Sunday Times Scahill deserves commendation. New Statesman An explosive piece of investigative journalism -- Ben Myers Shortlist Of all the insane Bush privatization efforts, none is more frightening than the corporatizing of military combat forces. Jeremy Scahill admirably exposes a devastating example of this sinister scheme. -- Michael Moore, Academy Award Winning Director A powerful argument against the privatisation of war... exemplary... If the job of writing about "the rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army" seems mightily ambitious, it has been undertaken by just the right person... he's the sort of writer who sets out the evidence and lets us make up our own minds Big Issue Revelatory -- Aimee Shalan Guardian An exhaustively well-researched expose -- Alastair Mabbott Herald [A] revealing study -- Tom Widger Sunday Tribune