From the publisher
Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and geographer. He is the author of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights (coauthored with A.C. Thompson), Blank Spots on a Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World, and Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes. He lives and works in Oakland and New York City.
Details
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Title
I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World
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Author
Trevor Paglen
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Binding
Paperback
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Edition
[ Edition: Repri
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Pages
155
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Language
EN
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Publisher
Melville House, U.S.A.
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Date
2010-10-25
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ISBN
9781935554141
Media reviews
Praise for Trevor Paglen and I COULD TELL YOU. . .
“ Gives readers a peek into the shadows . . . Department of Defense spokesman Bob Mehal told Newsweek that it ‘would not be prudent to comment on what patches did or did not represent classified units.’ That’s OK. Some mysteries are more fun when they stay unsolved.”
—Karen Pinchin, Newsweek
“An art book that presents peculiar shoulder patches created for the weird and top secret programs funded by the Pentagon’s black budget... an achievement.”
—Timothy Buckwalter, San Francisco Chronicle
“ Some of the worst crimes in the American landscape are hiding in plain sight, and nobody has ever pursued them more thoroughly or explained them more chillingly and engagingly than Trevor Paglen. What he is doing is important, fascinating, and groundbreaking.”
—Rebecca Solnit, author of Wanderlust
“ The iconography of the United States military. Not the mainstream military, with its bars and ribbons and medals, but the secret or ‘black projects’ world, which may or may not involve contacting aliens, building undetectable spy aircraft, and experimenting with explosives that could make atomic bombs look like firecrackers. Here, mysterious characters and cryptic symbols hint at intrigue much deeper than rank, company, and unit.”
—UTNE Reader
“ Of course, issuing patches for a covert operation sounds like a joke . . . but truth be told, these days everything is branded. Military symbols are frequently replete with heraldic imagery—some rooted in history, others based on contemporary popular arts that feature comic characters—but these enigmatic dark-op images, in some cases probably designed by the participants themselves, are more personal, and also more disturbing, than most.”
—Steven Heller, The New York Times Book Review
“ Trevor Paglen gets into the black heart of America’s black sites. There is no better guide to this great American mystery. What goes on inside these bases will determine the future of warfare—and who we are—for the rest of the century.”
—Robert Baer, former case officer at the CIA and author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism
About the author
Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and geographer. He is the author of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights (coauthored with A.C. Thompson), Blank Spots on a Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, and Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes. He lives and works in Oakland and New York City.
