"Saad Mohseni, chairman and CEO of Moby Group, Afghanistan's largest media company, charts a twenty-year effort to bring a free press to his country after years of Taliban rule, and how that effort persists even after the Taliban's return to power in 2021. In the heady early days of the American occ ... upation, Mohseni returns to Kabul which he had last seen as a child before the Soviet invasion. Casting about for ways to be involved in the dawn of a new Afghanistan, Mohseni makes what seems like a quixotic decision to leave the comforts of a career in international banking to start a Kabul radio station with his three siblings. This unlikely venture quickly blossoms into a burgeoning television empire, bringing Mohseni and his family and employees into sometimes uncomfortable contact with everyone who has a stake in the country-from the government of Hamid Karzai to White House officials. Moreover, their radio and television networks soon become a necessary beacon for millions of Afghans, who rely on them not just for independent news but for joyful pleasures like soap operas and Afghan Star, a beloved national singing competition in a country whose previous rulers had banned (and would again ban) music. Mohseni's position at Moby affords him unique insights into this extraordinary yet troubled country, the youngest in the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, and his powerful account captures the spirit and resilience of the Afghan people-notably the hundreds of men and women still working in Moby's Kabul office today, who, once again under Taliban rule, create programs, report the news, and educate the public. Radio Free Afghanistan is a stunning, vibrant portrait of a nation in turmoil, poised between despair and hope." (Publisher description) more

"The hard-hitting autobiography of the renowned, high profile TV investigator. In twenty-five years of investigative reporting Roger Cook has been knocked unconscious a dozen times, hospitalized on almost thirty occasions, and has had twenty-three bones broken by those who have resented his ruthless ... persistence – or just objected to the fact that he exists at all. He was born 6 April 1943 in New Zealand. His father – a timid man afraid of attack from Japanese submarines rumoured to have been sighted in Auckland harbour – soon found refuge and a new start for his family in Sydney, Australia. If anything was going to prepare Roger Cook for what he was to become, it was growing up in the Australia of the 1950s – a melting-pot of different nationalities, scarred by the war, and with an unsophisticated and sometimes brutal education system. After school and college he found his broadcasting feet at a Sydney commercial radion station, moving on to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He then emigrated to Britain to tackle BBC radio, where he prospered at ‘The World At One’. His brainchild, however, was ‘Checkpoint’, which became the most popular programme on Radio 4 after ‘Today’. During its twelve-year run, Cook and his team exposed a breadth of institutional incompetencies, bad law, injustices and naked criminality. The result was a series of awards for good journalism, significant changes in legislation, and the arrest and conviction of countless fraudsters and strong-arm villains. For his pains, Cook earned the sobriquet of ‘The Most Beaten-up Journalist in Britain’. Eventually he transferred the idea to television, where for twelve years ‘The Cook Report’ flourished. Organised crime, drug-smuggling, pornography, animal cruelty, the IRA. Cook has attacked them all in search of justice – and won. Published to coinincide with ‘Cook Report’ TV specials in June, August, October and December, Dangerous Ground is his breathtaking story." (Abstract) more