Mark Danner, Award Winning Author and Journalist, gave a public lecture on 23 February 2010 at the Manning Clark Centre. Read an interview with Mark Danner on Inside Story.

The Remnant Perfume of Imperial Dreams:
Politics, Violence & War in the Age of American Power

Mark Danner discussed his new book, Stripping Bare the Body, an upfront account of how terrorism works and how war looks, smells and feels. Drawing upon detailed narratives of politics, violence and war from around the world, Stripping Bare the Body, is a moral history of American power during the last 25 years. Encompassing two decades of frontline reporting, Stripping Bare the Body is a vivid and unforgettable history of what Mark Danner describes as a “grim age, still infused with the remnant perfume of imperial dreams.”

Readers are taken on a journey which exposes them to mass murder in Port-au-Prince; massacre in Sarajevo; suicide bombings in the suburbs of Baghdad; torture in ‘black sites’ throughout Thailand and Afghanistan; and political deal-making,personal rivalries and bureaucratic in-fighting in Washington, New York and Langley.

Mark Danner has reported and written on foreign affairs, politics and war for 25 years. He was for many years a staff writer at The New Yorker and contributes frequently to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. He is also Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics, and Humanities at Bard College.His books include The Secret Way to War, Torture and Truth, and The Road to Illegitimacy and The Massacre at El Mozote, which was chosen by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. Danner’s work has been honoured with a US National Magazine award, three Overseas Press Awards and an Emmy.