The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

Rajiv Chandrasekaran · 336 pages

An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

Jonathan Blitzer · 544 pages

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

Michela Wrong · 353 pages

Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace l

The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan

Christina Lamb · 352 pages

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Thomas L. Friedman · 560 pages

Examines Israeli-Palestinian relations, the PLO, Israeli politics, Lebanese factions, news reporting from the Middle East, and other issues of the Middle East.

Black Hawk Down

Mark Bowden · 486 pages

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, 3 October 1993, 140 elite US soldiers abseiled from helicopters into a teeming market neighbourhood in the heart of the city of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them about an hour. Instead, they were pinned down through a long and terrible night in a hostile city,

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Thomas E. Ricks · 487 pages

The definitive military chronicle of the Iraq war and a searing judgment on the strategic blindness with which America has conducted it, drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time.Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondant Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco is masterful and explosive reckoning with the planning and execution o

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa

Antjie Krog · 403 pages

"Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. But how could this country - one of spectacular beauty and promise - come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom

And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

Richard Engel · 241 pages

"Based on two decades of reporting, NBC's chief foreign correspondent's riveting story of the Middle East revolutions, the Arab Spring, war, and terrorism seen up-close--sometimes dangerously so. When he was just twenty-three, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab new

Obama's Wars

Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward interviewed dozens of high-ranking government officials to compile this record of the discussions and thought processes behind President Obama's decision to increase the American presence in Afghanistan by 30,000 military in early 2010 and begin phase-out of American involvement in mid-2011. The author used his access well in documenting secret discussions and public pronouncements

One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein

Whitney Alyse Webb · 544 pages

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein · 619 pages

**The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism** is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (dis

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos

Richard Lloyd Parry · 336 pages

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Joby Warrick · 384 pages

"In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents. When the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist ma

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

Ahmed Rashid · 294 pages

Shrouding themselves and their aims in deepest secrecy, the leaders of the Taliban movement control Afghanistan with an inflexible, crushing fundamentalism. The most extreme and radical of all Islamic organizations, the Taliban inspires fascination, controversy, and especially fear in both the Muslim world and the West. Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban into sharp

War's End: Profiles from Bosnia, 1995-1996

Joe Sacco · 72 pages

"How does an artist reconcile being forced to go to the front line of a brutal conflict that will change his life and homeland forever? What happens when a reporter finally comes face-to-face with an evil war criminal? Before his groundbreaking graphic novels Safe Area Gorazde and The Fixer, Palestinian author Joe Sacco created two short stories with characters from each side of the crossfire. Col

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Jeffrey Toobin · 384 pages

Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important--and secret--legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.Just in time for the 2008 presidential election--where the future of the Court will be at stake--Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of co

The Looming Tower

Lawrence Wright · 550 pages

Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War

Anthony Shadid · 474 pages

From the only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Iraq, an account of ordinary people caught between the struggles of nations. The Washington Post's Shadid went to Iraq, neither embedded with soldiers nor briefed by politicians. Because he is fluent in Arabic, Shadid--an Arab American born and raised in Oklahoma--was able to disappear into the divided, dangerous worlds of Ira

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Randy Shilts · 651 pages

The blueprint of 20th century investigative journalism. Tracing the course of HIV/AIDS through society; from its earliest as then unknown incarnation, to the height of this 1980s hysteria – the death of Rock Hudson: Shilts's book should be in every High School's final academic examinations coursework reading list, as a compulsory item. An unregrettable read.

This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War

Samanth Subramanian · 320 pages

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

Jeff Sharlet · 454 pages

A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of Christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerfulThey are the Family—fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen—congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators

By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Rebecca Nagle · 352 pages

The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda

Peter L. Bergen · 502 pages