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

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

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

The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe

Peter Godwin

Journalist Peter Godwin has covered wars. As a soldier, he's fought them. But nothing prepared him for the surreal mix of desperation and hope he encountered when he returned to Zimbabwe, his broken homeland. Godwin arrived as Robert Mugabe, the country's dictator for 30 years, has finally lost an election. Mugabe's tenure has left Zimbabwe with the world's highest rate of inflation and the shorte

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.

Bush at War

Bob Woodward · 416 pages

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11

Ron Suskind · 384 pages

What is the guiding principle of the world's most powerful nation as it searches for enemies at home and abroad? Who is actually running U.S. foreign policy? The story begins on September 12, 2001, as America began to gather itself for a response to the unimaginable. Journalist Suskind tells us what actually occurred over the next three years, from the inside out, by tracing the steps of the key a

500 Days: Decisions and Deceptions in the Shadow of 9/11

Kurt Eichenwald · 611 pages

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.

The Looming Tower

Lawrence Wright · 550 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

Holy War Inc. Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden

Peter L. Bergen · 304 pages

"On September 11, 2001, the world in which we live was changed forever. The twin towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down, one side of the Pentagon burst into flames, and more than six thousand men, women, and children lost their lives in the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil. As shocking as it was, it had been long in the making: the assault was the most sophisticated and

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

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

The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

Carlotta Gall · 368 pages

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.

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

Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam

Mark Bowden · 704 pages

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

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.

United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists

Peter Bergen · 387 pages

Presents a look at "homegrown" Islamist terrorism, from 9/11 to the present, discusses the perpetrators who have acted both in the U.S. and abroad, and examines the controversial tactics used to track potential terrorists. --Publisher's description.

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

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

James Bamford · 395 pages

James Bamford has been the preeminent expert on the National Security Agency since his reporting revealed the agency's existence in the 1980s. Now Bamford describes the transformation of the NSA since 9/11, as the agency increasingly turns its high-tech ears on the American public.The Shadow Factory reconstructs how the NSA missed a chance to thwart the 9/11 hijackers and details how this mistake

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

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