I am a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978 and winner of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. My work, including this book, has taken me to Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, New York, and elsewhere. Fragments of people and their distant voices are the behavior and quotes that inspire. Slices, starting at random moments and ending in bleak locations, fascinate and hypnotize. And transcribing handwritten notes, impressions, and exclusive interviews, create my RocknRolla lyrics.
I wrote...
Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. -- Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York
By
Richard S. Ehrlich
What is my book about?
My exclusive interviews, first-hand descriptions, and news reports, including a Tibetan Sky Funeral of human corpses eaten by vultures. The Dalai Lama hunting for Mao's reincarnation. A Potala Palace monk kills Chinese as a horse-riding insurgent. A Calcutta Dom caste undertaker suffers discrimination. India's "Bandit Queen" Phoolan Devi justifies her revenge killings.
The CIA's Tony "Poe" demands human ears and heads during the war in Laos. James "Mule" Parker, the last CIA officer to evacuate from Vietnam, reveals the CIA paid and quoted non-existent spies. "Bikini Killer" Charles Sobhraj and his girlfriends are also interviewed. American "Jack" Idema in Kabul is convicted of torturing Afghans to "confess" they knew Osama bin Laden's location. Warfare in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka also appear. Michelle describes her and her colleagues exposing themselves in Peepland on 42nd Street.
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The Books I Picked & Why
"Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?"
By
Edward Behr
Why this book?
Being a foreign correspondent in the so-called "developing world" is complicated in a myriad of ways, and journalists often become so deep into the story that their needs become strangely surgical, legal, and surreal.
Need some specific quotes to describe what is happening amid a bloodbath? Want to profile victims of torture and slaughter? Behr's book brings you into his experience as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek in Africa and other media work in a way few other reporters would like to admit -- except to each other.
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Dispatches
By
Michael Herr
Why this book?
The basic rule of writing a news story? Declarative sentences. These are easily understood and avoid confusing readers who want factual information first, with less of an emphasis on literary style. But all that changed when Herr wrote this book which turns words into weapons as you'll read in his lyrical and chilling reports during the U.S.-Vietnam War.
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
By
Hunter S. Thompson
Why this book?
If you haven't read this famous book, and didn't consider it as reporting about war, then take another look because this is Thompson's personal and public battle with America's mainstream culture.
Brutal. Takes no prisoners. No surrender.
Find out who are the winners and losers, and why these people and their beliefs are shaping today's world and the cultural revolution in the American homeland.
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The Journal of Albion Moonlight
By
Kenneth Patchen
Why this book?
The fiercely independent spirit of surrealists and other people trying to survive during World War 2 permeates this opulent novel with ghostly quotes and rebellious beliefs.
Laced with angels, forests, dreams, and women, this diary becomes increasingly fraught with questions of obedience, patriotism, dictatorship, and freedom.
Will your own perceptions be radicalized or soothed by this war story?
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A Clockwork Orange
By
Anthony Burgess
Why this book?
If all war is class war, then this urban battlefield is where society breaks down.
The movie was excellent. But the book is so much deeper with its own Russian-derived, invented slang in the mouths of British louts feeding on the terrible taste of "ultra-violence".
It doesn't matter which side you are on because everyone loses in their attempts to break through or control -- two directions that ultimately lead to our current real-life dystopia.
