Articles

New York Review of Books
Article

Who Pays For Economic Change?

In the American religion there stands no icon more sacred than the “free market,” embodying as it does the belief that Americans must trust in the benevolence of unseen forces to fulfill their destiny of wealth and power. In times of economic unrest, however, when factories close down, workers lose their jobs, and towns become impoverished, the prayers to the mysterious market gods give way to cries of anger and disbelief.

Mark Danner February 26, 1985
Article

Can The Press Tell the Truth?

When General Westmoreland hauled CBS into court for libel last year, the American press responded with a flood of sober commentary on a cherished subject – itself.

Mark Danner January 22, 1985
Article

The Place of Pornography

When no less sacred a national symbol than Miss America found herself displayed in a pornographic magazine last summer, the public was duly outraged – at the pornographers, for profiting from a young woman’s inexperience; at the pageant committee, for demanding she relinquish her crown; and finally at Miss America herself, for not knowing better.

Mark Danner November 30, 1984
Article

Terrorism and the Media

When Yasir Arafat spoke at the United Nations some years ago with a gun in his belt, he was giving a performance in what has become the terrorist theater.

Mark Danner October 30, 1984
Article

Should the CIA Fight Secret Wars?

Almost from the moment the first “contra” was issued his American, made combat boots, the Reagan Administration’s secret war against Nicaragua has been embroiled in a vociferous if somewhat bizarre public debate: Congressmen proclaim their outrage, editorialists confess their misgivings, while officials in Washington – who are running the war – blandly “decline to comment on intelligence matters.”

Mark Danner September 30, 1984
Article

Naming the Land: Poetic Variations on An American Theme

“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Thus Walt Whitman, in his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, expressed what has been the American poet’s struggle from the beginning-to wrest from the land a separate work of art.

Mark Danner August 30, 1984

Mark Danner

About Mark Danner

Mark Danner has written about foreign affairs and American politics for more than two decades, covering Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans and the Middle East among other stories. 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 and at Bard College and speaks and debates widely about America’s role in the world.

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