The heroes of John Pilger's narrative are the many ordinary people he has watched struggling to cope with difficult and often harsh living conditions: the dissidents in the Soviet Union, the victims of conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa, India, the Middle East, and Central America. It also includes his great-grandfather's Irish working generation, who were transported in chains to Australia for expressing "illegal oaths." It is a vivid, compelling, and sometimes darkly humorous personal story that covers the periods for which his journalism is renowned. John Pilger has witnessed many of the significant global upheavals of the last thirty years, as well as the everyday realities of injustices that often remain hidden from public view. His documentation of these events always stands out for its meticulously researched facts—especially those facts that governments and powerful interests prefer to keep secret—and for the relentless and always compassionate pursuit of truth.