E-Books from ProPublica

by Nikole Hannah-Jones
ProPublica, Oct. 29, 2012

ProPublica’s groundbreaking investigation into housing segregation, and the federal government’s large-scale failure to uphold the laws meant to prevent it

More than forty years after President Johnson signed the landmark Fair Housing Act into law, residential segregation in America remains unresolved. Designed to help dismantle the nation’s racially divided housing patterns, the act has gone largely ignored by every presidential administration—Democrat and Republican alike—since 1968.

In Living Apart, ProPublica investigates this failing, particularly how subsequent leaders, following President Nixon’s lead, have declined to use the billions in grant dollars awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as leverage to fight segregation. Their reluctance to enforce a law passed by both houses of Congress and repeatedly upheld by the courts reflects a larger political reality. Again and again, attempts to create integrated neighborhoods have foundered

This ebook includes an exclusive afterword by the author, as well as an appendix of original documents dating from the Nixon administration, revealing the internal politics swirling around the Fair Housing Act shortly after its enactment.

by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, May. 25, 2012

The harrowing and heartrending story of Guatemala’s Dos Erres massacre, and the survivors whose lives were forever changed by it

In 1982, at the height of Guatemala’s civil war, twenty soldiers from the army’s commando unit, called the Kaibiles, invaded the farming village of Dos Erres. Masquerading as leftist guerillas, the squad members cut their way through the small town, killing more than 250 men, women, and children. Only a handful of people survived. One of them, a young boy, was adopted by Kaibil lieutenant Ramírez and raised by Ramírez’s family, who named him Oscar. Just three years old at the time of the massacre, Oscar grew up unaware of his true origins. It wasn’t until almost thirty years later, living in the suburbs of Boston with a family of his own, that Oscar would learn the truth.

by Paul Kiel
ProPublica, Apr. 10, 2012

Sheila Ramos’s story mirrors the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their homes since the beginning of the housing crisis in 2007. The Great American Foreclosure Story details with clarity and empathy the road that led Ramos and so many like her toward financial ruin. Once the owner of a small business and a home, Ramos fell on hard times. Predatory lending and denied loan-modification applications eventually sent her and her three grandchildren packing, leaving behind their house in Florida and winding up in a tent outside of Ramos’s faraway hometown. 
Alongside Ramos’s story are additional investigations by ProPublica reporters Paul Kiel and his colleagues Cora Currier and Olga Pierce documenting the systematic failures at banks, mortgage servicers, and government watchdogs that have exacerbated the country’s most severe foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression. Drawing from whistleblower testimonies, extensive homeowner databases, and a trove of underlying data, The Great American Foreclosure Story is a comprehensive and unrivaled look at the housing crisis, and its continuing human toll.

by Dafna Linzer
ProPublica, Mar. 6, 2012

Over the past decade, presidential pardons have been four times more likely to favor whites, regardless of the type and severity of the crime committed. Applicants with connections to the United States Congress are also more likely to receive a pardon, despite 2001 reforms designed to minimize the impact of political influence on awards of clemency. In this yearlong investigation, ProPublica reporters Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur drew from hundreds of interviews with former White House counsels and pardon attorneys from the past five administrations, as well as from official documents including pardon applications and internal Justice Department memos. These sources, along with tables, graphs, and other exhibits, reveal a disturbing pattern in how and why pardons have—and have not—been awarded.

by Stephen Engelberg
ProPublica, Aug. 22, 2011

From whether the sex life of a politician is serious news to how Wikileaks is changing how to think about government secrecy, debates on issues of journalism are all around us, and constantly shifting. Stephen Engelberg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning managing editor of investigative journalism non-profit ProPublica, has had a unique vantage point on these questions for years. In this collection of a dozen short essays on the subject, Engelberg shares sharp analysis, in each case starting from a well-known story, and drawing on fascinating anecdotes from his own experience, as well as a passion for accountability.

by Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein
ProPublica, May. 11, 2011

In the months before the 2008 financial meltdown, bankers and hedge funds perverted the market to keep their lavish bonuses flowing. Their machinations made the collapse much worse. This is the Pulitzer Prize-winning series revealing how they did it.

by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica, and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR Mar. 18, 2011

Five soldiers injured in the same 2009 bomb blast are a case study in a new epidemic among America’s troops, who are grappling with a combination of concussion and post-traumatic stress disorder.

by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica, Feb. 22, 2011

When the well water on Louis Meeks’ ranch turned brown and oily, he suspected that the thousands of natural gas wells dotting the once-empty Wyoming landscape were somehow to blame. The hard part was proving it. Meeks’ struggle to get the energy companies to take responsibility, meticulously documented through three years of investigative reporting by ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten, coincide with a national uproar over the oil and gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing – a technology that promises to open large new energy supplies, perhaps at the expense of the nation’s water.

by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, Feb. 18, 2011

The 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai offer a rare picture of the ties between Pakistan’s intelligence service and the militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba. The trail of two key figures, an accused Pakistani mastermind and his American operative, traces the rise of a complex, international threat.