State of War: Ms-13 and El Salvador's World of Violence

"In State of War, journalist William Wheeler provides a corrective to the overly simplistic (and often outright racist) narratives that proliferate in contemporary American politics. The book makes clear that MS-13's rise is complex, the result of several overlapping factors, including the generational trauma wrought by the civil war, the failures of interventionist U.S. foreign policy, and the Salvadoran government's own corruption. Throughout his analysis, Wheeler embeds personal accounts from former and current gang members, politicians from both El Salvador and the United States, and Salvadoran police and military personnel. Readers are left with a nuanced portrait of MS-13's rise to power in a nation mired in corruption and soaked in blood....State of Warshines a light on the dark networks that conspire to maintain power and wealth at the cost of life and liberty." -- Commonweal

>"In State of War, his gripping, electrifying study of the brutal Salvadoran gang culture, William Wheeler dramatizes with almost painful immediacy a vital truth: that all the fevered talk about a 'crisis at the border' is really an ignorant lament about what three decades of US foreign policy have wrought. At its core, the so-called crisis is about what we as Americans have done to El Salvador and its Central American neighbors. To confront the savage violence ripping through those countries and sending their citizens on a desperate flight north is ultimately to find oneself gazing at the American face in the mirror. With his vivid prose and intrepid reporting, Wheeler has shown us the bloody consequences borne by real people--and given us a powerful, unforgettable book." -- Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

"Journalist Wheeler combines a clear sense of geopolitical history and gutsy on-the-ground reporting, producing a compact tale of a slow-motion, violent societal collapse....An urgent, digestible document of a violently failing state, with clear connection to flawed American policies past and present." -- Kirkus Reviews

William Wheeler is a writer and producer who has reported on political affairs across much of the developing world. The subjects of his reporting have been far ranging, including the Libyan refugee crisis and the fault lines of the E.U., the rise of Europe’s far right, the radicalization of a Danish jihadist, the murder of a Honduran environmentalist, and a Cold War assassination attempt on Bob Marley. He was a part of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting team that won National Press Club and Society of Professional Journalists awards for coverage of the rebuilding effort in Haiti, and his feature from Pakistan on geopolitical tensions over the Indus River won an Earth Journalism award at the Copenhagen climate summit. His work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, McSweeney‘s Quarterly, Playboy, and elsewhere. He is an Emmy-nominated producer who worked on Showtime's forthcoming doc-series, "The Trade," with Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman. He holds graduate degrees in international affairs and journalism from Columbia University. STATE OF WAR is his first book.