|
Joe Domanick, IJJ Senior Fellow for Criminal Justice
 Purchase |
“Cruel Justice : Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State”
Domanick takes a no-holds-barred look at the history and consequences of California’s three strikes law. He demonstrates how laws passed in haste, without deliberation, and in reaction to public hysteria can have unforeseen consequences as tragic as those they were designed to thwart. Domanick draws powerful portraits of the two innocent young girls--Kimber Reynolds and Polly Klaas--whose murders were the catalyst for the three strikes law; of the men who killed them; of the fathers who sought their revenge, and especially of the many people serving lengthy prison terms who are victims of the three strikes law itself. |
 Purchase |
“To Protect and to Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams”
This is literally the book on the Los Angeles Police Department. Recently updated, this 1995 Edgar Award winner takes a steely eyed look at one of America’s most notorious and controversial big city police forces. While Domanick in uncompromising in his critique of department policies and historic internal culture, he is just as generous in acknowledging the onset of long-awaited institutional reform
|
Marc Cooper, IJJ Associate Director
 Purchase |
“Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir”
Publisher’s Weekly called this L.A. Times best-seller “engaged reporting at its best.” Tracing the evolution of Chile from the days of President Salvador Allende, through the U.S. backed-coup of 1973, the Pinochet dictatorship and right to the present, Cooper takes the reader on an emotional ride through hope, the darkest despair and the restoration of national memory.
|
 Purchase |
“The Last Honest Place in America : Paradise and Perdition in the New Las Vegas”
Cooper’s narrative is a careening, screeching roller-coaster ride into the glittering dark heart of American popular culture, Las Vegas. Sin City, as depicted by the author, has become a fixture of the American landscape, its "symbolic capital" in many ways. Indeed, Vegas presents a special allure to cultural theorists like Neil Postman, to whom this volume is dedicated. The city embraces its kitschy supremacy with its drive-thru chapels and casinos. But it's also undergoing an evolution, about which Cooper is somewhat wistful, away from its early, campy seediness and toward a more fully realized, corporate-run money machine.
|
Martha Mendoza, IJJ Senior Fellow
 Purchase |
“The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War”
In 2001, Associated Press reporters Martha Mendoza, Charles Hanley, and Sang-Hun Choe, broke the story of how U.S. troops opened fire on a group of South Koreans during the Korean War; later, they won a Pulitzer Prize for their investigative work. The book begins with U.S. troops stationed in Japan on occupation duty. These troops, who had no combat experience and were used to the easy and sometimes "wild" life in Japan, soon found themselves in Korea facing the invasion of the North Koreans. The U.S. Army retreated until it reached the Pusan defense line and it was during this period that the massacre of civilians occurred. Recalling “Facing My Lai” in scope and content, this book tells a grim but true story.
|
Celeste Fremon, IJJ Fellow for Criminal Justice and Border Justice
 Purchase |
“G-dog And The Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle And The Gangs Of East Los Angeles”
Veteran reporter and feature writer Fremon takes us far beyond the sensationalist headlines and deep into the home turf of some of Southern California’s toughest gangs. There we find A courageous Catholic priest, Greg Boyle, who works with his homeboys to find redemption in an indifferent world.
|
Sally Lehrman , IJJ Expert Fellow for Racial Justice
 Download PDF |
“News in a New America”
In this report commissioned by the Knight Foundation, Lehrman analyzes the challenges facing news organizations as America undergoes radical ethnic, racial and demographic shifts. Good intentions and diverse recruiting methods are no longer enough, she says, to guarantee that newsrooms and their final product accurately mirror the complex world around them.
|
Frank Sotomayor, IJJ Senior Fellow
 To Purchase
Look for Book Icon
|
“Frank del Olmo: Commentaries on His Times” (co-edited by Sotomayor and Magdalena Beltran-del Olmo)
As a Los Angeles Times columnist, the late Frank del Olmo was known for his clear-headed analysis of hardball issues: politics, education, labor, law enforcement, immigration--as demonstrated in this book. Then, in the final decade of his life, a new dimension emerged in his writing: The compassionate father of a young son, Frank, dealing with autism. This book offers 90 of Del Olmo’s most memorable columns, including his 1994 piece dissenting from the Times’ reelection endorsement of Pete Wilson and attacking the governor’s “cynical” use of divisive Proposition 187. |
Helen Zia, IJJ Expert Fellow for Racial Justice
 Purchase |
“Asian American Dreams : The Emergence of an American People”
This groundbreaking book is about the transformation of Asian Americans from a few small, disconnected, and largely invisible ethnic groups into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society.
|
 Purchase |
“My Country Versus Me: The First Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy.” By Wen Ho Lee With Helen Zia
The Los Alamos scientist who was arrested in 1999 on suspicion of espionage and who was held under harsh prison conditions--and who was never charged with spying--writes of his experiences in this book. His case raised many issues relating to national security, governmental power, and the role of the media (in particular, the New York Times). Upon his release, the judge in the case apologized to Wen Ho Lee for the treatment he endured.
|
|
