Investigative jounalist Murray Waas provides the definitive source about a legal case related to the Bush administration’s attempts to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had publicly undermined the official rationale for war in Iraq. Libby was convicted (and his sentence commuted by Bush), but there remain many unanswered questions about the extent of the adminisntration’s willingness to lie to the public, and key media players’ eagerness to repeat administration claims in return for favored access. Waas’ commentary helps makes the long court transcripts accessible and draws out major issues. -jl

Veteran media critic Norman Solomon has helped educate a generation of media activists with his creative and politically uncompromising essays on the faces of power elites hidden behind the most ingrained habits of corporate media. He has paid particular attention to the links between American media and militarism. Solomon's latest book, Made Love, Got War is an activist memoir – tracing the author's development of critical political perspectives as a journalist, anti-nuclear activist and media critic from the 1960s through the 1980s. Laden with enlightening anecdotes, including accounts of Solomon's controversial trips to Iraq with Congressmen and Sean Penn. -jl

This biographical study focuses on Murrow's pre-war and wartime years heading the London bureau of CBS. Closely following the British debates on whether to engage in the growing conflict between the National Socialist regime in Germany and its victimized neighbors, Seib tracks Murrow's personal responses to events, and the access to powerful officials afforded by his status as a prominent American journalist. Seib's main interest is to examine Murrow's conviction that Britain – and later, the United States – should enter the war, and how that conviction colored his broadcasts from London. For Seib, Murrow's siding "with the angels" more than makes up for any lack of objectivity in his coverage. The study raises compelling questions about the proper role of ethics and advocacy for contemporary journalists, in a period in which many prominent journalists once again helped lead America into war. -jl

Media educator and activist Lynn Ziegler's first published work is a delightful tactical guide addressed to parents concerned about the effect of TV on their kids. Both sternly cynical about TV's potential as an educational tool and optimistic about young peoples' ability to critically engage with flawed media content, Spongeheadz offers moms, dads and kids creative and often fun tools for squeezing out the mental sponge. Targeted topics include deceptive advertising, racist stereotyping, and TV's often-corrosive effect on literacy. Ziegler also provides tools for engaging kids (and adults?) in critical thinking about the constructed nature of media programs by thinking about the policies and technology involved in contemporary media production. An added bonus: page after page of illustrations of fantasy TV remotes drawn by Ziegler's young students. -jl

Dahr Jamail's journalistic essays will stand as one of the most important documents of what war and occupation mean to Iraqis whose communities are suffering the short- and long-term effects. In this first collection, Jamail shares the voices of his Iraqi interviewees as well as those of fellow journalists, Iraqi drivers and fixers, and US soldiers – voices largely missing from US mainstream coverage of the war. It's Jamail's own voice which is the real find, however – interweaving his journalistic coverage with comments on the political and media forces that paved the way for war, and reflections on the haunted sense of connection and responsibility he gained from his travels to and from Iraq. -jl

Critical media scholar and activist Bob McChesney focuses his attention on his own academic field in his latest title, and Communication Revolution will be of primary interest to students (nonacademic as well as academic) of political communications. The book’s opening chapters offer an annotated historical bibliography of the American idea of a free press, leading to a description of the author’s own political education. McChesney describes becoming politicized around academia’s unwillingness to challenge, rather than simply observing or enabling, how powerful economic and political establishments have led media away from its traditional watchdog role. He argues that media scholars should embrace responsbility for helping encourage media norms and institutions that support civic engagement and democracy. -jl

In his latest work, Robert Jenkins launches an unflinching and personal attack on the consumption of pornography and the porn-ization of mass entertainment media. Getting Off surveys how porn serves as a pervasive but rarely-examined cultural support for patriarchy, homophobia and racism. Jenkins also attacks conventional definitions of masculinity based on conflict and emotional noncommunication, and implicates porn in its continued hold on modern men of all political stripes. -jl

Kids today are creating their own culture and counterculture in the midst of a manipulative media landscape wherein "alternative," "independent," and "underground" have lost their meaning, deployed over and over by corporations angling for a piece of the teen rebellion market. Punk Planet editor and DIY evangelist Anne Moore looks at this Orwellian phenomenon from many angles - the corporate cooptation of radical culture, the use of copyright law to prohibit rather than protect creativity, the shifting definitions of authenticity and integrity, the attractions of selling out, and the ever-present possibilities for cultural counterinsurgency. The results: easily the best, funniest and most memorable book on cultural resistance in a world where resistance to branding has itself become the basis for more branding. -jl

Zirin is probably the most thoughtful and politically savvy sports writer working today. Here offers his second fantastic collection of essays connecting sports, sports journalism and social/political issues, including racism and sexism in professional sports, doping and responses to doping, soccer and globalism, and the extreme contradictions between the high-dollar economics of professional sports and the popularity of sports as a social institution in many lower-income communities. Citing past examples such as Muhammad Ali, Toni Smith, Oscar de la Hoya and others, Zirin calls for politicized athletes to join forces and use their status as public figures to work for justice. He also calls for fans to recognize the struggles for justice both masked by and embodied within sports. Zirin's work offers a way of looking at sports as a principal site for such struggles, and not simply (to paraphrase Noam Chomsky) as "training in irrational jingoism." -jl

This book is part memoir, tracing Josh Rushing's path from military spokesman during the Iraq war - a role most famously documented in Jehane Noujaim's documentary Control Room - to on-air producer for Al Jazeera's English-language broadcast service. As such, it provides a fascinating insider perspective on that network's possible role in the US (the network has hardly any carriage on US cable systems). While light on deep analysis of the US media or the war, the book does provides Rushing some opportunity to critique the US military's press relations during the war, and he compares Jazeera's coverage of the war favorably to the largely uncritical US network coverage. Rushing also provides many interesting anecdotes on press-military interactions at CentCom in Kuwait. -jl