without compromise
A collection of groundbreaking investigations by legendary Village Voice muckraker Wayne Barrett. With piercing moral clarity and exacting rigor, Wayne Barrett tracked political corruption fact by fact, document by document for 40 years. The first to report on the scams and crooked deals that fueled the rise of Donald Trump in 1979, Barrett went on to expose the shady dealings of small-time slum lords and powerful New York politicians alike, from Ed Koch to Rudy Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg.
Without Compromise is the first anthology of Barrett's investigative work, accompanied by essays from colleagues and those he trained. In an age of lies, fog, and propaganda, Barrett reminds us that facts, when clearly accumulated, are our best defense of democracy.
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praise for without compromise
Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
“As Donald Trump rose to power, no journalist busted him earlier or better than the late investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, whose indispensable work is gathered in Without Compromise. Barrett’s pieces provide an x-ray into Trump’s soul, and into the civic corruption that fueled his rise. These stories are essential reading, alive with fresh insights and information illuminating today’s politics, and remind us that rigorous journalism is still democracy’s best defense.”
Kirk Swearingen at SALON.COM
One can learn much about political dealmaking in New York in the late 20th century in "Without Compromise: The Brave Journalism That First Exposed Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the American Epidemic of Corruption," a collection of Barrett's investigative article published after his death in 2017, prefaced with essays by people who knew and worked with him (https://www.salon.com/2023/04/10/the-man-saw-coming-wayne-barrett-warned-us-decades-ago)
Michael Kruse at POLITICO
This collection... traces the shift from mid-century clubhouse backscratching to a shinier but no less corrosive way for dressed-up rogues to get fat off the public till as the city and then the country veered from the operative concept of the commonweal toward something like rich-get-richer or winner-take-all. Bound in Without Compromise is some of the most diligent coverage ever of what amounts to the swamp that launched Trump. ( https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/01/swamp-that-birthed-trump-433697)
Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes and author of A Colony in a Nation.
“An instantly classic collection by one of the greatest reporters New York ever produced, and one of the greatest of his era. Few could combine righteous fury with dogged attention to detail like Barrett. This collection is a treasure and (somewhat maddeningly) a reminder that the fools, crooks, and wannabe strongmen that have our republic dangling over a precipice have been this way for a long, long time.”
Sheila Coronel, Dean of Academic Affairs and Director Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia Journalism School.
“These pages bring Wayne Barrett back to life in all his investigative glory, his moral clarity, his righteous rage. Barrett was prescient, not just about Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, but also about how, time and time again, individuals and institutions would fail to rein in the greed of those who feed off the public trough and to address the racism that undergirds both public policy and private behavior. Wayne Barrett’s life and work continue to inspire, especially at a time when truth and facts are under siege. He had a mantra: ‘The job of our profession is discovery, not a dissertation.’ Journalists are paid to tell the truth, he said, and that he did, no matter who, no matter what.”