e-Books
The Pulitzer Center has invested heavily in seeking out new platforms and partners to extend the work of journalists we support and to make use of the extraordinary presentation of multimedia material now possible on tablets and other mobile devices. We hope to make books like those highlighted below the capstone for the best of our projects, giving readers an immersive, narratively rich way of engaging the issues they cover. We believe these presentations will appeal to all audiences, and especially to the university and secondary-school students that have become a major focus of the Pulitzer Center’s work.
New platforms. New income for journalists. And new hope for sustained reporting on issues that matter. We hope you’ll take a look, buy the books, and make an investment in the future of journalism.
WE NEVER KNEW EXACTLY WHERE: DISPATCHES FROM THE LOST COUNTRY OF MALI Peter Chilson
In 2012, Mali, once a poster child for African democracy, all but collapsed in a succession of coups and countercoups as Islamist rebels claimed control of the country's north, making it a new safe haven for al Qaeda. Prizewinning author Peter Chilson became one of the few Westerners to travel to the conflict zone in the following months to document conditions on the ground. What he found was a hazy dividing line between the uncertain, demoralized remnants of Mali's south and the new statelet formed in the north by jihadist fighters. Chilson's definitive account is the first in the new Borderlands series of e-books from Foreign Policy and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Purchase the Foreign Policy PDF edition. The Kindle version is available here.
VOICES OF HAITI Lisa Armstrong, Kwame Dawes and Andre Lambertson
An itinerant preacher whose story reads like Job—except for an incandescent smile and a mountain-moving faith. A woman who remains resolutely joyful despite the HIV that has infected half her family. Young girls subjected to rape and forced into commercial sex. A couple whose triumph over the disease is a study in grace. “Voices of Haiti” tells these and other stories in a mesmerizing presentation that combines the poetry of Kwame Dawes, the prose of Lisa Armstrong, the photography of Andre Lambertson, and the music of Kevin Simmonds, from work that has been featured in The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, and USA Today. To purchase this iBook, please visit http://bit.ly/voices-haiti. Voices of Haiti was recognized as one of the best e-books of the year by Pictures of the Year International Awards (POYi).
IN SEARCH OF HOME Greg Constantine, Stephanie Hanes
They are not refugees. Often they are living in their homes in a country they consider to be their own. Yet they are stateless—without the basic right to get an education, work in the legal economy, receive health benefits, get married, vote or own property. The cause is often rooted in religion or ethnicity but even when the stateless are not actively persecuted they remain the most vulnerable. Writer Stephanie Hanes and photographer Greg Constantine draw on field work from the past six years to present a nuanced look at the stateless peoples of Kenya, Burma, and the Dominican Republic. To purchase this iBook, please visit http://bit.ly/statelessness. * In Search of Home received an Honorable Mention from the National Press Photographers Association in the Tablet/Mobile Delivery category (2013).
AFGHANISTAN BY DONKEY Anna Badkhen
Anna Badkhen’s extraordinary account of a year in northern Afghanistan is a travel guide to a conflict that has raged for the last decade, with little end in sight. Badkhen, a courageous war correspondent, decided to embed not with American troops but with the Afghan people. Throughout the year, she returns again and again to the country, traveling by foot, by taxi—and even by donkey—to the remote villages and hamlets of the Afghan north. It’s a place so remote that even the death of Osama bin Laden barely registers, where war is taken as a fact of life along with the rituals of mourning and celebration that Badkhen is allowed to witness. It is a bleak tale told by an expert storyteller. To purchase this e-book, visit http://bit.ly/afghanistan-donkey
DEEP WATER Dan Grossman
Dan Grossman is an award-winning science journalist, regular contributor to public radio, and multiple Pulitzer Center grantee. He has been reporting on science and the global effects of climate change for over a decade, with field reporting that has taken him from Mongolia and the Andes to Europe and Australia. Dan's new e-book, Deep Water, is a partnership with TED books and makes innovative use of the new TED book-app to bring us a multimedia adventure about the urgent research into one of the most critical issues of our time. To purchase this e-book, visit http://thedeepwaterbook.com
UPCOMING PROJECTS
Gary Knight, conflict photographer and co-founder of VII Photo Agency, and Jeff Howe, a former editor at Wired and 2008 Nieman Fellow, will investigate The Mekong Massacre—an unsolved murder of 11 Chinese narco-trafickers in the Golden Triangle—and the broader geopolitical backdrop of drug trade in the region. This multimedia detective story will be published in The Atavist, a tablet-only platform specializing in long-form narrative journalism.
Trevor Snapp and Alan Boswell have been reporting on the struggles of South Sudan's first year as an independent nation. They are producing an iBook in collaboration with Triple Canopy, another web publishing house, which they hope will serve as a blueprint for journalists striving to create more enduring collections of reporting than the news cycle presently allows.
In partnership with Foreign Policy, we are publishing three e-books on the general theme of borderlands. After an open call for proposals that drew more than 140 applicants, we selected Graeme Wood to write about the Iraq-Iran border; Matthieu Aikens to write about the lawless frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan; and Peter Chilson, who is providing us with a remarkable series of richly reported dispatches from West Africa.