Second Read

James Marcus is deputy editor of Harper's Magazine and author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Review, The Paris Review, and Best American Essays 2009. The Columbia Journalism Review, founded in 1961 under the auspices of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, is one of the world's most respected resources for media criticism and commentary.

• Introduction Rick Perlstein on Paul Cowan's The Tribes of America Nicholson Baker on Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year Dale Maharidge on James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Robert Lipsyte on Paul Gallico's Farewell to Sport Marla Cone on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring Ben Yagoda on Walter Bernstein's Keep Your Head Down Evan Cornog on A. J. Liebling's The Earl of Louisiana Ted Conover on Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Jack Shafer on Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Naresh Fernandes on Palagummi Sainath's Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts Chris Lehmann on Charles Raw, Bruce Page, and Godfrey Hodgson's Do You Sincerely Want to Be Rich? Connie Schultz on Michael Herr's Dispatches Michael Shapiro on Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day Douglas McCollam on John McPhee's Annals of the Former World Scott Sherman on Marshall Frady's Wallace Gal Beckerman on Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart John Maxwell Hamilton on Vincent Sheean's Personal History Tom Piazza on Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night Thomas Mallon on William Manchester's The Death of a President Miles Corwin on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor David Ulin on Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem Justin Peters on Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure Claire Dederer on Betty MacDonald's Anybody Can Do Anything Contributors

Let us now praise forgotten nonfiction. It is the fate of great journalism, perhaps, to fade away just a few decades after appearing. Yet that leaves for us the pleasures of rediscovery, which the essays collected in Second Read bring off in superb style. -- Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew and What's the Matter with Kansas? A book of journalism about books of journalism that are worth reading twice? The essays here honor their subject in the best possible way: they are so good, so rich, and so finely written, they deserve to be read again. -- David Hajdu, music critic for The New Republic and professor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism contemporary journalists offer fresh looks at the work of previous generations in this rich collection.Daily News Daily News Second Read carries value for any writer, whether oft-published or a novice or in between. -- Steve Weinberg Writer