Celebrating a Left-Wing Writer's "Crackling Expose"
Dwight Garner, author of"Inside the List," aweekly sidebar that accompanies the Times Best Seller list in the Sunday Book Review, provided an enthusiastic plug thisweek for left-wing Nation magazine writer Jeremy Scahill's book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
"Jeremy Scahill's muckraking book 'Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army,' enters the nonfiction list at No. 9. It's a crackling exposé of the secretive military contractor Blackwater USA, which Scahill refers to as both 'the new Halliburton' and 'the elite Praetorian Guard for the 'global war on terror.'"
Garner presumably also approved of the doubting quote marks author Scahill puts around the phrase "global war on terror," and considered his frequent appearance in the left-wing Nation as a plus point: "Scahill writes frequently for The Nation; his book has been given a lift by an appearance on Terry Gross's NPR show and from intense buzz in the blogosphere. In his interview with Gross, Scahill used two phrases - 'going Blackwater' and 'keeping your noun alive' - that sound new, at least to my ears, and deserve to be better known."
