Breaking the Sound Barrier

Amy Goodman, whose Democracy Now! says it all and says it well, collects bits of work in this anthology. It's a perfect introduction to a woman whose passion is for social justice. I recommend it highly. It's articulate, detailed, and persuasive. It's not funny, though: Goodman could use the bite of a sense of humor at times. Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," for example, was a short essay whose satire even today still takes to court the Brits who mistreated the Irish. Still, she's always on target and takes down her prey not with rhetoric or propaganda but with truth telling.

As a regular podcast listener to Democracy Now! I found this book to be an excellent anthology of Democracy Now! reports. What makes this is great book is Amy Goodman's ability to sniff out the big stories and to bring the people behind these stories to Democracy Now! viewers/listeners and "Breaking The Sound Barrier" readers. Amy Goodman is an excellent journalist in that she diligently avoids injecting her opinion in any of her interviews/stories. She lets the news makers tell their stories in their own words. This is the way an excellent journalist should do his/her job. I look forward to reading more of Amy Goodman's books.

Breaking the Sound Barrier offers a series of articles and writings and comes from the host of the daily radio and TV program Democracy Now! It provides a powerful set of insights based on the journalist's many observations of the democratic process, from observations of climate change politics to Wall Street socialism, media rights, and more. Collections strong in democratic processes need this.

Amy Goodman is one of those few journalists not on the payroll of the corporate media giants nor "embedded' with the military-industrial complex. As a result, she write with a freshness and integrity that is unfettered by ideological bias, political clichés, or the myths common to American civics classes, business school s and military academies. Like Arundhati Roy, Michael Hogan and Noam Chomsky she is able to show through carefully documented facts how the so-called experts on Fox and CNN consistently get it wrong, and why their getting it wrong is no accident. I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's Field Notes on Democracy and Michael Hogan's Savage Capitalism and the Myth of Democracy. I noticed that they had both been "paired" with Goodman's Breaking the Sound Barrier, and the reason for this is obvious. All three books are written by clear-thinking citizens with no axe to grind, no ties to any ideology or corporate entity. They were written by Socratic "gadflies" and by their relentless questioning they bring back to the rest of us in the cave an alternative view of the world which is both troublesome and oblique--like the truth. Without Any Goodman and her few companions in courage, my view of the world would be a very bleak and befuddled one, like that of the million viewers and listeners of the mass media and the readers of Sarah Palin.

There is one line throughout this book that sticks with me, and which I think, sums up the tone of this book. "Each person is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts." From climate change, race, election, and media, to everything else in between. I found Amy's reading short, sweet, and to the point, the political leanings were sown into the writing--which was expected--but more than anything, I got a history lesson from this book. The best analogy that I can think of (and this might be horrible, let me know?) but imagine if Howard Zinn were a reporter, and instead of reporting the facts of the real history several hundred years ago, but instead was doing it day by day, as it happened. "Nothing but the facts ma'am" and Amy delivers! Mass Casualties: A Young Medic's True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor in Iraq