Mission Unaccomplished: TomDispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters [Paperback]

Tom Engelhardt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2006

Profiles in Dissent is a collection of remarkably fresh and provocative interviews with some of the iconoclastic thinkers and activists of our time. These candid conversations — ranging from Howard Zinn to Chalmers Johnson, Cindy Sheehan to Mike Davis, Ann Wright, who retired from the State Department to protest the Iraqi invasion and became "a felon for peace," to Boston Globe columnist James Carroll — focus on the Bush administration's imperial dreams and ham-handed acts. They suggest new ways to frame American global policy, while catching something of the white heat of our moment, and offer a chronicle and original perspectives on our troubling times. Tom Engelhardt, creator of the website TomDispatch.com — who has been called "the I.F. Stone of the internet" — brings the immediacy of the moment to his introductions and his questions. His daily Tomgrams contain his parsing of contemporary news events, as well as his posting of original content from some of America's leading progressive thinkers. A quarter million readers a month visit his website (and hundreds of thousands more read his dispatches posted elsewhere on the Internet).

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

An editor in publishing for the last 25 years, Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War era. He is at present consulting editor for Metropolitan Books, a fellow of The Nation Institute, and a teaching fellow at the journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books; 1 edition (September 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560259388
• ISBN-13: 978-1560259381
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,493,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book - A Must Read, June 28, 2007

By 

R. DAoust - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mission Unaccomplished: TomDispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Paperback)

MISSION UNACCOMPLISHED is a must-read for the stay-at-home news junkie who wants a clear and concise evaluation of the failed invasion of Iraq. While reading the book, I felt like I was in a group of well-educated friends enjoying a conversation about current events. Tom Engelhardt has assembled a broad and ecletic group of thinkers and activists, including participants in the September 2005 anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. Engelhardt asks perceptive questions--the sort you wish you had thought of to ask yourself.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Political Views from the Non-establishment., May 22, 2010

By 

J.L. Populist (WI,USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mission Unaccomplished: TomDispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Paperback)

Tom Engelhardt provides transcripts from interviews he conducted with such notables as Juan Cole, Howard Zinn, and Barbara Ehrenreich. Two of my favorite authors were also interviewed: Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich.
You won't read these viewpoints in mainstream media.

Mr. Engelhardt also includes quotes he received while interviewing protesters in Washington D.C. Some of these sentiments were quite witty.

A topic that I found interesting was the difference in journalistic coverage in foreign countries. An example used was American journalism vs. the BBC. The difference being in who is sent and how well they communicate in the native language.

A quote from Juan Cole on page 89 sums up Bush's failures as president-
"Trying to run the world the way you run Texas is a big mistake"

Not having read any of Barbara Ehrenreich's books, I enjoyed her interview and its inclusion in this book. She is an experienced voice for the middle class.

This is a dated book but its value lies in its dissenting views of the Bush administration. Definitely worth a read!