JOURNALISM

Over the past decade, Joe Sacco, "our moral draughtsman" (Christopher Hitchens), has increasingly turned to short-form comics journalism to report from the sidelines of wars around the world. Collected here for the first time, Sacco's darkly funny, revealing reportage confirms his standing as one of the foremost war correspondents working today.

In "The Unwanted," Sacco chronicles the detention of Saharan refugees who have washed up on the shores of Malta; "Chechen War, Chechen Women" documents the trial without end of widows in the Caucasus; and "Kushinagar" goes deep into the lives of India's untouchables, who are hanging "onto the planet by their fingernails." Other pieces take Sacco to the smuggling tunnels of Gaza; the trial of Milan Kovacevic, Bosnian warlord, in The Hague; and the darkest chapter in recent American history, Abu Ghraib. And on a mission with American troops—pieces never published in the United States—he confronts the misery and absurdity of the war in Iraq. Among Sacco's most mature, accomplished work, Journalism demonstrates the power of our premier cartoonist to chronicle human experience with a force that often eludes other media.

“This volume of Sacco’s shorter pieces makes an outstanding companion to his acclaimed book-length works… A powerful record of voices that would have otherwise gone largely unheard.” - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Deeply humane, disturbing portraits of war, oppression, and sectarian tension… Sacco’s work is a reminder of the hidebound nature of much international reporting, and of the potential for creative disruption in the field. If there were any justice in American media, a hundred Saccos would bloom.” - Bookforum

Joe Sacco is the author of the Eisner Award-winning graphic novels Footnotes in Gaza and Safe Area Goražde, among other books. His works have been translated into fourteen languages and his comics reporting has appeared in Details, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and Harper's. He lives in Portland, Oregon.