Phil Shannon

Killers for hire

Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
By Jeremy Scahill
Serpent’s Tail, 2007
452 pages, $35 (pb)

The state of Israel's bloody foundations

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
Oneworld Publications, 2006
313 pages, $39.95 (hb)

Save the whales

Harpoon: Into the Heart of Whaling
By Andrew Darby
Allen & Unwin, 2007
296 pages, $29.95 (pb)

Down and out in Tent City

Down to This: A Year Living with the Homeless
By Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
University of Queensland Press, 2007
475 pp, $32.95 (pb)

Driving destruction for a political end

Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
By Mike Davis
Verso, 2007
228 pages, $39.95 (hb)

Maralinga's nuclear nightmare continues

Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up
By Alan Parkinson
ABC Books, 2007
233 pages, $32.95 (pb)

Understanding Iraq

The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn
Verso, 2006
229 pages, $49.95 (hb)

Keep speaking up against the powerful

Writing in an Age of Silence
By Sara Paretsky
Verso, 2007
138 pages, $39.95 (hb)

Capital's crimelords

Gangster Capitalism: The United States and the Global Rise of Organised Crime
By Michael Woodiwiss
Constable, 2005
260 pages, $44.95 (pb)

A soldier's fight against an unjust war

The Deserter’s Tale: Why I Walked Away From the War in Iraq
By Joshua Key
Text Publishing, 2007
224 pages, $32.95 (pb)

Bird flu - the not-so-natural disaster of our times

The Monster at our Door: The Global Threat of Bird Flu
By Mike Davis
The New Press, 2006
216 pages, $22 (pb)

Torture in the service of empire

A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror
By Alfred W. McCoy
Metropolitan Books, 2006

290 pages, $38.95 (hb)
American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib & Beyond
By Michael Otterman
Melbourne University Press, 2007
285 pages, $24.95 (pb)