Hedges's books and articles tend strongly toward polemics and the final chapter here on Occupy Wall Street and Zuccotti (Liberty) Park certainly is. But the first four chapters on Pine Ridge, Camden, West Virginia, and Immokalee are solid pieces of reportage - made even better by Joe Sacco’s excellent graphic strips. Read it and weep. ( )

This is an interesting book about Pine Ridge, Indian Country; Camden, NJ; a mining town; farm laboring wage slaves; and Occupy Wall Street. The best parts are the personal stories, Studs Terkel-style, which are illustrated into comic book panels. They show the incredible dignity and humor that people can have despite being mired in poverty, sexual abuse, and addiction in the USA. It's all interesting information that you need to know, but it was so bleak and depressing that I had to skim some parts. At the end when we get to the Occupy movement in Zucotti park, it gets a bit more cheerful. And I had to smile at the earnest descriptions of how decisions are reached in the general assembly (the stack, hand signals, etc), as if all those things were brand new instead of well over a decade old. I also rolled my eyes at a few other things. (The authors say agents provacateurs started the Black Bloc. Please! And also that the best tactic, still, is to have peaceful demonstrations that goad the police into rioting because the world will be dismayed and horrified to learn about it.) Overall, though, I liked this book. ( )

A stark, vivid portrayal of the leavings of the American Corporation. Anyone at all wondering about the true depth of darkness of this country look no further. The illustrations brought me to tears. ( )

There is the "family-friendly" version of America, as seen on TV, and then there have always been the unpleasant realities that we'd rather keep out of sight especially when the scope of these realities is deepening and widening thanks to mercenary corporatism. Together, Chris Hedges, the outspoken firebrand activist-writer and Joe Sacco, the visual-graphic conflict-journalist, take us unsparingly to panoramas that are not nightmarish dystopias, at least not fictional ones. We discover that the American dream and standard-of-living has been seriously downgraded in the quarters that have already sustained oppression for generations. We now have cities so totally in debt that there is no extant infrastructure, we have environmental devastation with no benefit and no recompense for those most affected, and we have organized crime that claims to be a societal stratum and offers up, as the only option, cannibalistic-victimization of the weakest amongst economically segregated racial groups.
Surprisingly sweet stories of resilience exist in the face of these brutalities, these faceless paper atrocities. Love and culture survive and, perhaps, are strengthened. We learn that those who realize that our monetary overlords only care for their own are learning that knowledge, informal connectedness can cause the blinkered plutocrats cognitive disconnection. ( )

Deeply shocking and touching. A wonderful build up and continuation of Howard Zinn's work on the Unites States Empire. ( )