North Korea Undercover: Inside the World's Most Secret State

Sweeney, John (Get this book)
In 2013, BBC reporter Sweeney traveled to North Korea, posing as a university professor on an eight-day tour with a group from the London School of Economics. Drawing on surreptitiously captured footage, the official tour video, firsthand experiences, and interviews, he constructed a documentary for BBC Panorama. In this enlightening, often irreverent companion volume, he goes into further detail about his time in the isolated country and how it evolved into its current state. One of Sweeney’s primary contentions is that “Kim Jong Un’s talk of nuclear war is a confidence trick... blinding us to a human rights tragedy on an immense scale.” This account is shocking and unsettling, but also darkly entertaining.--Publisher's Weekly

The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza

Blumenthal, Max (Get this book)
An alarming report on Israel's devastating 2014 attack on Gaza. In a narrative based on interviews with citizens, physicians, and others, the Blumenthal writes that the Israeli military "unleashed massive force against the civilian population," killing 2,200 people (mostly Palestinian civilians), wounding over 10,000, and destroying about 18,000 homes. Based on his observations and accounts from survivors, the author charges that the Israeli onslaught targeted Palestinian civilians rather than Hamas fighters. He claims that Israeli soldiers engaged in execution-style killings, deliberately destroyed Gaza City high-rise buildings housing dozens of local media organizations, used Palestinians as human shields, and attacked cemeteries as well as U.N. schools that served as refugee shelters. The war elevated the status of "fundamentalist warriors" in Israel and left a wake of "rage and spreading radicalism" that is c e rtain to bring more military conflict. Explosive, pull-no-punches reporting that is certain to stir controversy. --Kirkus