About the Author

Mark Danner has written about foreign affairs and American politics for more than two decades. He was for many years a staff writer at The New Yorker and contributes frequently to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. He teaches at the University of California at Berkeley and at Bard College in New York.

Reviews

"Danner’s engrossing analysis and painstaking scholarship may yet bring a measure of justice to the thousands of innocent Iraqis tortured in the cause of freedom and democracy."
— Bill McSweeney, Irish Times

"An invaluable resource…far more durable and available than any series of virtual documents on the web."
— David Simpson, London Review of Books

"...Despite the dereliction of network news and the subterfuge of the Bush administration, the information is all there in black and white, if not in video or color, for those who want to read it, whether in the daily press or in books like…Mark Danner’s Torture and Truth."
— Frank Rich, The New York Times

"Danner’s book does a fine job assembling [a collection of the relevant sources], from the Taguba report to the Justice Department’s memoranda and opinions—one of which became so notorious for giving the president power to use coercive force that it is now often simply known as the 'Torture Memo'.”
— The Washington Post Book World

"The documents, some of which are published for the first time in Torture and Truth, make for gripping, if disturbing, reading."
— Mother Jones

"…A reprint of some of the most important items in the historical record, an invitation to read the small print that prefigured and followed on the scenes now embedded in our memory and reproduced all over the world as icons of the Coalition’s cruelty and hypocrisy….By offering themselves for slow reading and rereading, they also open up for discussion some of the deeper issues governing the way we perpetrate and respond to conduct that many of us consider inhuman and appalling. Among these issues is the language we use, and its consequences not just for others but for ourselves."
— London Review of Books

"Mr. Danner’s book is valuable because to the 50 pages of articles he originally wrote for The New York Review of Books, the volume adds hundreds of pages of the relevant Justice and Defense Department memorandums, the photos, prisoners’ depositions, Red Cross reports and the military’s own major investigations of Abu Ghraib. Motivated readers can judge for themselves."
— Peter Steinfels, The New York Times

"Every bit as important as the 9/11 Commission’s report."
— Sanford Levinson, The Los Angeles Times

"Danner has compiled excellent documents on the abuse of prisoners of Abu Ghraib…Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
— Choice

"[Danner] begins with passionate essays that originally appeared in The New York Review of Books, but very soon [he] leaves the stage and lets the documents speak for themselves….If you read it in the order Danner provides, you can see exactly how this horror came about—and why it’s still going on. As Danner observes, this is a scandal with almost everything in plain sight."
— Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times Book Review

"Danner’s…essays…reveal a keen mind at work and warn us to expect little serious congressional investigation into one of the great foreign policy disasters in our lives."
— The Washington Post Book World