New Books in Journalism Marshall Poe

In 2016, journalist Clare Hammond embarked on a project to study the railways of Myanmar–a transportation network that sprawls the country, rarely used and not shown on many maps, and often used at the pleasure of the country’s military.
In her book On the Shadow Tracks; A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar (Allen Lane, 2024), Clare travels the lengths of Myanmar’s railways, from the south of the country through the conflict-riven border areas, finally ending up at Naypyidaw, the nation’s planned capital.
In this interview, Clare and I talk about Myanmar’s railways, her travels along them, and how they act as a symbol for Myanmar’s governments, past and present.
Clare Hammond is a British journalist. Based in London, she works for non-profit Global Witness, investigating issues relating to natural resources, conflict and corruption. In Yangon, where she lived for six years, Hammond was most recently the digital editor of Frontier, Myanmar's best-known investigative magazine, where she oversaw daily news coverage.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of On the Shadow Tracks. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.
Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.
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Richard interviews BBC Journalist Dougal Shaw about his book CEO Secrets based on the BBC Series CEO secrets in which he interviewed 100s of CEOs.
When Dougal first began as a business journalist at BBC, he wasn’t particularly interested in the topic. Prior to his new career, he was training for doctorate in history. He began creating content for social media, interviewing CEOs who found themselves in the BBC offices. He then shifted to producing miniseries, talking to different CEOs every single week.
Dougal has taken years of interviews and analyzed them for patterns in the lives and behaviors of CEOs. The pattern that stood out most was the difference between CEOs who founded their own company, and CEOs who hadn’t, what Dougal refers to as “corporate climbers.”
The founders were brasher, more prone to extemporaneous speech, and sometimes quite eccentric. Meanwhile, the corporate climbers were highly-prepared and behaved like participants in a job interview.
He also noticed certain traits among the younger founders. Many of them, reassuringly, appeared to be wise beyond their years. This early maturity was frequently catalyzed by a traumatic event in their family like divorce or death. Entrepreneurship for some became like a coping strategy. It was something they could throw themselves into at an early age.
Dougal also discusses the challenges of interviewing CEOs, especially when they bring along their PR teams to coach them. Getting past the censors is one his goals, especially when his agenda differs from the CEO’s. Dougal views himself as somewhat of a psychologist, attempting to coax real and authentic answers out of his interviewees. The best answers for the audience are ones that surprise, not boilerplate jargon. 

As well as focussing on ideas in the book they discuss who he would have liked to interview, and what Dougal is going to do next. They were introduced by Peter Cowley, whose extraordinary story was featured on the NBN a few months ago here, or go to to the Public Success Private Grief website here 
Listeners can get get a 25% discount if they use the code ‘CEO25’ on the Bloomsbury website here

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CEO Secrets is now out as a book!
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Lost Literacies: Experiments in the Nineteenth-Century US Comic Strip (Ohio State UP, 2024) is the first full-length study of US comic strips from the period prior to the rise of Sunday newspaper comics. Where current histories assume that nineteenth-century US comics consisted solely of single-panel political cartoons or simple “proto-comics,” Lost Literacies introduces readers to an ambitious group of artists and editors who were intent on experimenting with the storytelling possibilities of the sequential strip, resulting in playful comics whose existence upends prevailing narratives about the evolution of comic strips.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, figures such as artist Frank Bellew and editor T. W. Strong introduced sequential comic strips into humor magazines and precursors to graphic novels known as “graphic albums.” These early works reached audiences in the tens of thousands. Their influences ranged from Walt Whitman’s poetry to Mark Twain’s travel writings to the bawdy stage comedies of the Bowery Theatre. Most importantly, they featured new approaches to graphic storytelling that went far beyond the speech bubbles and panel grids familiar to us today. As readers of Lost Literacies will see, these little-known early US comic strips rival even the most innovative modern comics for their diversity and ambition.
Alex Beringer is a professor of English at the University of Montevallo. His research and teaching focuses on nineteenth century American literature, visual culture, and comics. He received his Ph.D. in English in 2011 from the University of Michigan and has held fellowships with the American Antiquarian Society, University of Cambridge and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His work has appeared in American Literature, Arizona Quarterly, PopMatters.com, and elsewhere.
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Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin, 2024), he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. Ukrainian resistance—determined, nimble, often heroic—upset those plans. Trofimov’s eloquent reporting of resistance in Ukraine is simultaneously clear-eyed and complex; his account is as illuminating as it is riveting. In this conversation of May 2024, he talks as well about how the situation is evolving.
Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is a seasoned war reporter and a native of Kyiv, Ukraine.
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Newspaper (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Dr. Maggie Messitt is about more than news printed on paper. It brings us inside our best and worst selves, from censorship and the intentional destruction of historic record, to partisan and white supremacist campaigns, to the story of an instrument that has been central to democracy and to holding the powerful to account.
This is a 400-year history of a nearly-endangered object as seen by journalist Maggie Messitt in the two democratic nations she calls home – the United States and South Africa.
The “first draft of history,” newspapers figure prominently through each movement and period of unrest in both nations-from the first colonial papers published by slave traders and an advocate for press freedom to those published on ID cards, wallpaper, and folio sheets during civil wars. Offices were set on fire. Presses were pushed into bodies of water. Editors were run out of town. And journalists were arrested.
Newspaper reflects on a tool that has been used to push down and to rise up, and a journey alongside the hidden lives that have harnessed its power.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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As a teenager in Shetland, Jen Stout fell in love with Russia and, later, Ukraine – their languages, cultures, and histories.
Although life kept getting in the way, she eventually managed to pause her BBC career and take up a nine-month scholarship to live and work in Russia. Unfortunately, this dream only came true in November 2021, as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders. Three months later, she left Russia but only got as far as Vienna before heading back into Ukraine via Romania with a rucksack and a handful of freelance contracts.
In Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Cost of Russia’s War (Polygon, 2024), we experience Europe’s biggest land war since 1945 through the eyes of a war reporter, photographer, and cultural observer during tours in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, and close to the frontline in Donbas. 
Via railway workers, soldiers, writers, activists, and old women sleeping in bunkers, we encounter stoical resistance. Stout writes: "I was finding warmth and determination all over the place when what editors expected was fear and despair. I tried to explain that the resilience I described wasn't an individual phenomenon but society-wide. The more Russia attacked Ukrainian society; the less inclined people were to anything remotely resembling despair. They only got angrier".
A freelance journalist, Jen Stout was a reporter at CommonSpace in Glasgow and for the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press before joining BBC Scotland in 2018.
*The author's book recommendations are The Face of War: Writings from the Frontline 1937-1985 by Martha Gellhorn (Eland, 2016 - first published in 1959), The Letters Of Martha Gellhorn selected and edited by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus, 2006), and Island by Aldous Huxley (Vintage Classics, 2005).
Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series.
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