Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War

by Mark Danner

For the past two decades, Mark Danner has reported from Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans, and the Middle East. His perceptive, award-winning dispatches have not only explored the real consequences of American engagement with the world, but also the relationship between political violence and power. In Stripping Bare the Body , Danner brings together his best reporting from the world’s most troubled regions—from the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti to the tumultuous rise of Aristide; from the onset of the Balkan Wars to the painful fragmentation of Yugoslavia; and finally to the disastrous invasion of Iraq and the radical, destructive legacy of the Bush administration. At a time when American imperial power is in decline, there has never been a more compelling moment to read these urgent, fiercely intelligent reports.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, War, Journalism, Political Science, Sociology

656 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2009

About the author

Mark David Danner is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Reviews

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. Mark Danner brings up Ford Maddox Ford's GOOD SOLDIER near the end of this tome and titles one of its sections "The Saddest Story," but this is no literary venture into the warzone. As its subtitle simply states: Politics, Violence, War is a collection of reportage from Haiti, Bosnia and Iraq, Abu Ghraib and "black sites," which brings home the purported statement by 1918 US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson that the first casualty when war comes is truth.

Its title STRIPPING BARE THE BODY is a taken from a quote by Leslie F. Manigat, president of Haiti, February-May 1987, defining political violence, and throughout the global conflicts Danner vividly reports from, in voluminous detail, empathy and beautiful prose, we repeatedly learn of the power of war and the weakness of politics, and the wake of unnecessary violence and death left behind the two. The brutality is hard to take. Worse is the United States ineffectualness in its diplomatic involvement that makes the sorrowful tragic.

We start with outside conflicts, but by the final and devastating section the United States is no longer bystander but perpetrator. Our nation's turn from ideals that we use to buttress the myth of exceptionalism to condoning and participating in torture from executive order is sobering. It's easy in the first two sections to judge the butchers of Haiti and Bosnia, but Danner shows the blood on our hands and it's hard not to weep. The reprehensible actions of war, the sliding ethics of our nation, the seeming impossibility of political will to resolve conflict, all this builds to a depressing but important read.

Danner is a great reporter and maybe even greater writer. He digs down into the grammatical grains of statements and extracts truths and omissions of truth latent in those quotes with the skills of a surgeon removing a malignant tumor. His afterward is a must read for anyone interested in the literary arts. But the entire book, and it is a long and dense collection of pieces mostly culled from the New York Review of Books and The New York Times, is critical for any citizen who claims the dubious mantle of patriotism.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure why this book isn't more widely read in the genre, especially considering all of the pieces are from major publications such as The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. It could be it's heft, the fact it's not from a major publisher, or that most of the pieces are from several years to decades old. Of particular importance are the early articles on Haiti just after the fall of the Duvalier regime. Although these are more than twenty years old, they establish a framework under which one can better understand the Haiti of today. On some of the broader pieces -- about the end of the Cold War, for example -- Danner's reach exceeds his grasp. He's best when he is on the ground making sense of local events in a broader context.

[Michael Greening · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and provocative, Danner's book is by turns ghastly and infuriating, but it serves well as a primer for post-Cold War politics

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I was going to be reading a cogent and current critical analysis of American foreign policy over the past quarter century, particularly in regions plagued by violence and war, much of which we have either purposefully or unwittingly precipitated. I was initially disappointed to find out that, rather than being a new work, the book is instead a collection of essays composed over the past 25 years. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a try. After 100 pages, I have simply given up. I almost never fail to finish a book I have started to read, but I just couldn't go on. Life is too short. It's not that the writing is bad, far from it. The narrative is extraordinary, but entirely too long! This book is certainly not for the casual reader who has an interest in foreign affairs, particularly in some of the world's flash points

[Claire S]

NYT Review of Books review here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/boo...

(warning - graphic violence in photo at the top of the browser window on this link)

Sounds like just the sort of thing that I'll be all caught up to, after Dark Valley. Lots of the worst things going on in the world, caught up in to one neat volume. But synthesis is useful..

Oh, wait, actually reading the review, sounds like it kinds of focuses a bit much on the physical atrocities vs. their meaning in the societal context; and it lays out other weaknesses of the book as well.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

really good book, especially the segments about haiti and the balkan region, if you want to know what's the deal with tonton macoutes, or why nowadays you never hear about yugoslavia in the news, or if you want to learn about the new set of procedures used by the U.S. that some people call torture, well check this book out, it's interesting, just don't expect to read it during one bathroom visit

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read...very interesting points raised and a i would say a real American Patriot. America does need to have a greater debate with itself and her new direction....having said that the Obama administration have started to turn the tide already.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me a little less than a month and a half to read since I had to sandwich it between reading books that weren't as depressing. Though these stories are beyond heartbreaking, for many reasons, they are stories that need to be told and to be known more widely.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very painful book to read, as it saw coming many of the issues we still confront today. For those who have been there, or close by, the conclusion is very difficult: that we have learned very little, and we don't have the courage to confront our ghosts.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book to read about Haiti. Danner is an incredibly eloquent writer, but the book is just so long that I stopped reading before I got to the sections on Iraq and the Balkans.

[Heather]

I am so excited to read this...