Errol Morris

Standard Operating Procedure is an utterly original collaboration by the writer Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families) and the film-maker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War). They have produced the first full reckoning of what actually happened at Abu Ghraib.Standard Operating Procedure reveals the stories of the American soldiers who took and appeared in the haunting digital snapshots from Abu Ghraib prison that shocked the world and simultaneously illuminates and alters forever our understanding of those images and the events they depict. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morriss startlingly frank and intimate interviews with Americans who served at Abu Ghraib and with some of their Iraqi prisoners, as well as on his own research, Philip Gourevitch has written a relentlessly surprising account of Iraqs occupation from the inside-out rendering vivid portraits of guards and prisoners ensnared in an appalling breakdown of command authority and moral order. Gourevitch and Morris have crafted a nonfiction morality play that stands to endure as essential reading long after the current war in Iraq passes from the headlines. By taking us deep into the voices and characters of the men and women who lived the horror of Abu Ghraib, the authors force us, whatever our politics, to re-examine the pat explanations in which we have been offered or sought refuge, and to see afresh this watershed episode. Instead of a few bad apples, we are confronted with disturbingly ordinary young American men and women who have been dropped into something out of Dantes Inferno. This is a book that makes you think, and makes you see an essential contribution from two of our finest nonfiction artists working at the peak of their powers.

The first full reckoning of what actually happened at Abu Ghraib prison-"one of the most devastating of the many books on Iraq" (The New York Times Book Review) A relentlesly surprising and perceptive account of the front lines of the war on terror, Standard Operating Procedure is a war story that takes its place among the classics. Acclaimed author Philip Gourevitch presents the story behind a defining moment in the war, and a defining moment in our understanding of ourselves- the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner abuse. Drawing on Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morriss astonishing interviews with the Americans who took and appeared in the pictures, Standard Operating Procedure is an utterly original book that stands to endure as essential reading long after the current war in Iraq passes from the headlines.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case Early on the morning of February 17, 1970, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green Beret doctor, called the police for help. When the officers arrived at his home they found the bloody and battered bodies of MacDonalds pregnant wife and two young daughters. The word pig was written in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. As MacDonald was being loaded into the ambulance, he accused a band of drug-crazed hippies of the crime.So began one of the most notorious and mysterious murder cases of the twentieth century. Jeffrey MacDonald was finally convicted in 1979 and remains in prison today. Since then a number of bestselling booksincluding Joe McGinnisss Fatal Vision and Janet Malcolms The Journalist and the Murdererand a blockbuster television miniseries have told their versions of the MacDonald case and what it all means.Errol Morris has been investigating the MacDonald case for over twenty years. A Wilderness of Error is the culmination of his efforts. It is a shocking book, because it shows us that almost everything we have been told about the case is deeply unreliable, and crucial elements of the case against MacDonald simply are not true. It is a masterful reinvention of the true-crime thriller, a book that pierces the haze of myth surrounding these murders with the sort of brilliant light that can only be produced by years of dogged and careful investigation and hard, lucid thinking. By this books end, we know several things: that there are two very different narratives we can create about what happened at 544 Castle Drive, and that the one that led to the conviction and imprisonment for life of this man for butchering his wife and two young daughters is almost certainly wrong. Along the way Morris poses bracing questions about the nature of proof, criminal justice, and the media, showing us how MacDonald has been condemned, not only to prison, but to the stories that have been created around him. In this profoundly original meditation on truth and justice, Errol Morris reopens one of Americas most famous cases and forces us to confront the unimaginable. Morris has spent his career unsettling our complacent assumptions that we know what were looking at, that the stories we tell ourselves are true. This book is his finest and most important achievement to date.

Esta excepcional obra es una mirada al corazón de la guerra de Irak, la historia de las infames fotografías de la tortura en Abu Ghraib vistas a través de los ojos y las voces de los soldados que las tomaron. Hay imagenes que trascienden su significado original para convertirse en iconos. En la guerra de Irak, este es el caso de las fotografias de las torturas en Abu Ghraib. Las fotografias no pueden contar historias -dice Philip Gourevitch-, solo pueden ser la evidencia de las historias, y una evidencia muda. Son necesarias la investigacion y la interpretacion. La balada de Abu Ghraib es la historia de los soldados norteamericanos que fueron enviados a Irak como libertadores para acabar trabajando como carceleros en las antiguas mazmorras de Sadam Husein, asumiendo el papel de los verdugos que se suponia que ellos debian combatir; es la historia de como esos soldados se convirtieron en ejecutores -pero tambien en victimas- de una terrible injusticia. Esta excepcional obra es una mirada al corazón de la guerra de Irak, la historia de las infames fotografías de la tortura en Abu Ghraib vistas a través de los ojos y las voces de los soldados que las tomaron y que aparecen en ellas, y que hicieron tambalear todas las argumentaciones proferidas en favor de esta guerra contra el terrorismo.La critica ha dicho...Gourevitch capta el detalle revelador en la mejor tradicion de The New Yorker, como A sangre fria, de Capote, o Hiroshima, de Hershey. La balada de Abu Ghraib es una lectura esencial para esta epoca.The Tennessean Una lectura tan compulsiva como la mejor novela. Una completa y aterradora cronica de un desastre made in USA.Publishers WeeklyEl ejemplar libro de Gourevitch pesara durante años.The New York Observer De lectura obligatoria.Newsweek