Journalism

25 Books to Read Before You Die: Pacific Northwest Edition

A consummate selection of books written by Pacific Northwest authors.

I’ve been an admirer of local war reporter/comics journalist Joe Sacco since reading Safe Area Goražde, his incredible long-form comic about the Bosnian War. Journalism gathers many of his shorter cartoon pieces from war zones ranging from the Russian military occupation of Chechnya to the Iraq War to the Gaza Strip. Though the locations change, Sacco’s commitment to capturing the daily realities of both military and civilian life in a war zone, and his obvious empathy for those struggling through violence and oppression, are deeply moving and informative. Sacco often positions himself within the narrative, a canny device that simultaneously admits to the subjectivity of his work and reminds the reader than he was there — meeting people, witnessing their lives, and coming home to share their stories with others. Reading Journalism gave me new eyes with which to view the world, and a profound appreciation for the power of comics to communicate what can’t be described using words alone. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

Over the past decade, Joe Sacco has increasingly turned to short-form comics journalism to report from conflict zones around the world. Collected here for the first time, Sacco's darkly funny, revealing reportage confirms his standing as one of the foremost war correspondents working today. Journalism takes readers from the smuggling tunnels of Gaza to war crimes trials in The Hague, from the lives of India's "untouchables" to the ordeal of Saharan refugees washed up on the shores of Malta. And in pieces never published before in the United States, Sacco confronts the misery and absurdity of the war in Iraq, including the darkest chapter in recent American history — the torture of detainees.

Vividly depicting Sacco's own interactions with the people he meets, the stories in this remarkable collection argue for the essential truth in comics reportage, an inevitably subjective journalistic endeavor. Among Sacco's most mature and accomplished work, Journalism demonstrates the power of our premier cartoonist to chronicle lived experience with a force that often eludes other media.

"The images Sacco draws are so powerful that they burn deep into your retina and reconfigure how you see the world....Journalism displays Sacco at the top of his game." National Post (Toronto)

Joe Sacco is the author of the Eisner Award-winning graphic novels Footnotes in Gaza and Safe Area Goražde, among other books. His works have been translated into fourteen languages and his comics reporting has appeared in Details, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and Harper's. He lives in Portland, Oregon.