In her provocative book, Brooke Kroeger argues for a reconsideration of the place of oft-maligned journalistic practices. While it may seem paradoxical, much of the valuable journalism in the past century and a half has emerged from undercover investigations that employed subterfuge or deception to expose wrong. Kroeger asserts that undercover work is not a separate world, but rather it embodies a central discipline of good reporting—the ability to extract significant information or to create indelible, real-time descriptions of hard-to-penetrate institutions or social situations that deserve the public’s attention. Together with a companion website that gathers some of the best investigative work of the past century, Undercover Reporting serves as a rallying call for an endangered aspect of the journalistic endeavor.

PETE HAMILL is a journalist, novelist and essayist. The author of more than 20 books, he is the winner of the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists the Louis Auchincloss Prize from the Museum of the City of New York. He is currently a  Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.