Stripping Bare the Body shows at close hand how terrorism works and how war looks and smells and feels. Drawing on rich narratives of politics and violence and war from around the world, Stripping Bare the Body is a moral history of American power during the last quarter-century, as told by one of the world’s leading writers.

A newly installed Haitian president told Mark Danner in riot-torn Port-au-Prince, “Violence strips bare a society’s body, the better to place the stethoscope and track the life beneath the skin.” This stark truth came to haunt Danner, especially after the president was overthrown in a bloody coup d’état.

Stripping Bare the Body moves from mass murder on election day in Port-au-Prince, to massacre by mortar bomb on the streets of Sarajevo, to suicide bombings in the suburbs of Baghdad, to torture in the secret “black site” prisons of Thailand and Afghanistan, to political deal-making, personal rivalries and bureaucratic in-fighting in Washington and New York and Langley. Here is the vivid, unforgettable history of what Mark Danner calls a “grim age, still infused with the remnant perfume of imperial dreams.”

“There’s probably no one alive who understands political conflict and upheaval better than Mark Danner, and there is almost certainly no one who writes more eloquently about it. Stripping Bare the Body is an unmitigated masterpiece of reporting and analysis.” —Dave Eggers

"No other writer combines brilliant and courageous reporting with brilliant and courageous political and moral thinking as Danner does. He is also, first and last, a breathtakingly good writer." —Michael Pollan

"Mark Danner is leading journalism’s improbable renaissance. This book is must-reading for anyone who hopes to understand our era of peril and possibility." —Ron Suskind

"With this vivid and deeply disturbing book, Mark Danner affirms his standing as our pre-eminent guide to the world’s broken places." —Andrew J Bacevich