Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq by Sarah Glidden
In the tradition of graphic novel journalism such as Sarajevo, Fixer and Palestine, Rolling Blackouts takes the reader into a world touched on only lightly by the nightly news. Glidden chronicles her travels with friends in a journalism nonprofit as they follow the aftermath of the Iraq war from Kurdistan to Syria, picking up stories from those they meet along the way as well as from the group itself as they contend with what it means to be journalists, friends, and Americans in the modern era. The key to the tale is transparency; it seems that practically everything makes it onto the page in one way or another, and Glidden scrupulously details when dialogue comes verbatim from a voice recorder, and when it is condensed from multiple episodes into one. This comports well with the general behind-the-scenes nature of the action taking place. Even as the author discusses the challenge of making the work itself, she is presenting her journalist friends grappling with similar issues of the