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🧲 Books like this

Descent into Chaos: The United States & the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Central Asia

Ahmed Rashid · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

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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

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States · 567 pages

Final report of the National Commission on terrorist attacks upon the United States. The result of months of intensive investigations and inquiries by a specially appointed bipartisan panel. While the commission notes that future attacks are probably inevitable, a coordinated preventive effort along with a clear plan to respond with efficiency can offer Americans some hope in a post-9/11 world.

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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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

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror

Bernard Lewis · 197 pages

In his first book since What Went Wrong? Bernard Lewis examines the historical roots of the resentments that dominate the Islamic world today and that are increasingly being expressed in acts of terrorism. He looks at the theological origins of political Islam and takes us through the rise of militant Islam in Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, examining the impact of radical Wahhabi proselytizing, an

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

Noam Chomsky · 301 pages

From the world's foremost intellectual activist, here is an irrefutable analysis of America's pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow. The United States is in the process of staking out not just the globe, but the last unarmed spot in our neighbourhood - the skies - as a militarized sphere of influence. Our earth and its skies are, for the Bush adminis

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

Ron Suskind · 431 pages

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of "The Price of Loyalty" and "The One Percent Doctrine" returns with an election year account of the looming national security crisis that America faces right now.

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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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

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Seymour M. Hersh · 432 pages

Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his stories in The New Yorker, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning w

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Current AffairsTerrorismPoliticsNonfiction
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The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

Mark Mazzetti · 400 pages

An account of the transformation of the CIA and America's special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world's dark spaces: the new American way of war.

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Current AffairsTerrorismPoliticsNonfiction
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Current AffairsPoliticsDiplomatic HistoryNonfiction
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This Unquiet Land

Barkha Dutt · 336 pages

India's fault lines run wide and deep. Some of them go back centuries, others are of comparatively recent origin. The myriad villains these fault lines have spawned include rapists, murderers, terrorists, prophets of religious hatred, corrupt politicians, upholders of abhorrent caste traditions, opponents of free speech and dissent, apologists for regressive cultural practices, and external advers

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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The Rise of Islamic State

Patrick Cockburn · 172 pages

Out of the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring and Syria, a new threat emerges. While Al Qaeda is weakened, new jihadi movements, especially ISIS, are starting to emerge. In military operations in June 2014 they were far more successful than Al Qaeda ever were, taking territory that reaches across borders and includes the city of Mosul. The reports of their military coordination and

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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ISIS: The State of Terror

Jessica Stern, J.M. Berger · 385 pages

"Two of America's leading experts on violent extremism and terrorism explain the genesis, evolution, and implications of today's most barbaric jihadist army, Islamic State--and how we can fight it"-- Though terrorist groups are a fixture of contemporary politics and warfare, the world has never witnessed the degree of sheer brutality demonstrated by the group know as ISIS-- the Islamic State of I

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

Will Potter · 256 pages

Examines the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to target and prosecute environmentalists and animal rights activists, discussing people and events associated with radical activism, and describing political, legal, and public relations strategies that attach nonviolent acts of civil disobedience with "eco-terrorist" labels.

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel

Dan Ephron · 320 pages

"A riveting story about the murder that changed a nation: the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,"--Amazon.com.

PoliticsTerrorismCurrent AffairsNonfiction
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ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan · 341 pages

"How did a group of religious fanatics, clad in black pajamas and armed to the teeth, manage to carve out a violent, fundamentalist "Islamic state" in wide swaths of Syria and Iraq? How did the widely celebrated revolution against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad descend into a movement led by a psychopathically violent band of jihadists dedicated to the destruction of America? And just who are these

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone

Scott Shane · 400 pages

A dramatic account of the cat-and-mouse game between the Obama administration and most-wanted terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki traces the President's shifting campaigns and the evolution of the robotic technology that ended Awlaki's life.

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals

Jane Mayer · 392 pages

In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the country were panic-stricken. Radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of chaos and fear, but the key players, Vice President Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential p

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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The Looming Tower

Lawrence Wright · 550 pages

Current AffairsPoliticsTerrorismNonfiction
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Zeitoun

Dave Eggers · 352 pages

From Goodreads: The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days followi

Current AffairsTerrorismPoliticsNonfiction
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Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

Ted Koppel · 289 pages

Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before

Current AffairsTerrorismPoliticsNonfiction
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