I Am a Soldier Too or Digital Destiny

I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story

Author: Rick Bragg

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Bragg lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of the most famous POW this country has known.

In I Am a Soldier, Too, Bragg let’s Jessica Lynch tell the story of her capture in the Iraq War in her own words--not the sensationalized ones of the media's initial reports. Here we see how a humble rural upbringing leads to a stint in the military, one of the most exciting job options for a young person in Palestine, West Virginia. We see the real story behind the ambush in the Iraqi Desert that led to Lynch's capture. And we gain new perspective on her rescue from an Iraqi hospital where she had been receiving care. Here Lynch’s true heroism and above all, modesty, is allowed to emerge, as we're shown how she managed her physical recovery from her debilitating wounds and contended with the misinformation--both deliberate and unintended--surrounding her highly publicized rescue.
In the end, what we see is a uniquely American story of courage and true heroism.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction: Hero	3
1	The Deadliest Day	7
2	Princess	14
3	Last Chances, and a Chance at War	30
4	Boot	36
5	Lori	48
6	Ruben	56
7	Lost	60
8	Taken	70
9	Damaged	79
10	M.I.A.	82
11	Time Standing Still	85
12	Wounds	95
13	The Enemy?	97
14	Hope	105
15	Saddam General	110
16	A Blonde Captive	121
17	Travels	128
18	A Soldier, Too	129
19	Under the Sand	133
20	Miracle	135
21	Love Letters	145
22	"Come Get Me"	147
23	Heroes Everywhere	152
24	Not Knowing Who to Hate	162
25	Changes	174
26	Barn Raising	181
27	Home	187
28	Normal?	197
29	The Long Shadow of Jessica Lynch	202
	Acknowledgments	205

Books about: Hormone use in Menopause and Andropause or Addiction and Spirituality

Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy

Author: Jeff Chester

The celebrated media advocate's "damning and important" (Publishers Weekly) case for digital media to serve the public versus corporate interests.

Praised by the leading media analysts of our time, from Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney to Ben Bagdikian and The New Yorker's Ken Auletta, Digital Destiny describes "what's gone, and is going, wrong with the digital media in this country" (Midwest Book Review).

In this "intimate" and "comprehensive" (AlterNet) account, Chester, one of the nation's leading advocates for a more open and democratic U.S. media system, warns that the potential of the Internet and other digital communication channels to function as "the people's media" is being undermined by a powerful, largely invisible coalition of corporate and political interests. Instead of the information commons that many dreamed of, our electronic media system is increasingly designed to sell to rather than serve the public and is becoming dominated by commercial forces and personal data collection that threaten privacy and freedom of expression in the digital age.

Prescient and provocative, Digital Destiny "will become required reading for a generation of students, scholars, activists, and concerned citizens across the nation" (Robert W. McChesney).

Publishers Weekly

In recent years, the Federal Communications Commission has come under fire from advocacy groups and, increasingly, the general public for its regulatory decisions (or, in many cases, lack thereof). Writing in the tradition of critic Robert McChesney, media watchdog Jeff Chester examines the FCC, charting the close network of lobbyists, trade associations and other industry representatives in which it is embedded. Through close analysis of recent FCC moves and decisions on media consolidation and network neutrality, Chester makes a damning and important case for sweeping reform in governmental regulation, culminating in a series of policy recommendations that would adjust the balance of power between media corporations and customers. Unfortunately, Chester is mostly preaching to the converted; the general tone of the book is so stridently (even antagonistically) polemic that it's more likely to turn off uninformed or dissenting readers than persuade them. While offering red meat for those already concerned about issues of personal privacy and media choice in an era of growing corporate media oligarchy, Chester doesn't do much to reach beyond them, limiting the book's appeal both as a book and as a piece of advocacy. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A sobering view of today's entrenched corporate media giants as a threat to the concept of an enlightened electorate. As executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public-interest group, the author has spent 30 years in the middle of Washington's often obfuscated communications policy-making apparatus. Recent trends, he argues, have so broken down former caveats against consolidation of media ownership-newspapers, radio, TV and now digital networks and services-that the future of media content, including the Internet itself, may be effectively determined without public participation. Thanks to rampant deregulation of large media corporations, particularly under the reign of former Bush administration FCC Commissioner Michael C. Powell, Chester asserts, commercial considerations-advertising revenues and fee-based media services-have become the prime force in new media development and delivery schemes. (The news here for many readers may be that it wasn't always this way.) Longstanding policy guidelines recognized that multiple media ownership in local markets could result in shaping information solely to further the agenda of corporate owners. However, Powell, son of former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell, pushed a GOP-endorsed free-market campaign that, while rebuffed in some of its more extreme dimensions, has now empowered single entities to own multiple media outlets and services in local markets. As a way of pointing out the determination-and, in his view, insidiousness-of media giants to lobby against ownership restrictions, Chester singles out the New York Times Corp. as one of the most aggressive, noting that the maneuvers of its corporate stewards remainedcuriously absent from its own news pages for an extended period. A party power shift in Washington, the author sums up, won't necessarily diminish the threat. Complex, quixotic attempt to sway the American public from the temptation to "amuse itself to death."