Necessary Contexts: Essays of Our Times

The essays in the following pages—to describe them as columns or op-eds doesn’t quite do them justice—are among the best writing that has ever been done in journalism in English regardless of place of origin.

They were originally published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and are worthy of publication anywhere. Their being released in book form provides not only a wider audience but also beginning journalists and those who have long been in the profession the opportunity to learn from one of journalism’s most capable practitioners, and to realize in reading them that writing in journalism can be as serious and as meaningful as “the splitting of the atom and the parting of the Red Sea” (Nick Joaquin).