Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

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

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

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

Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield

Jeremy Scahill · 680 pages

In this book the author of "Blackwater," takes us inside America's new covert wars. As he reveals, the foot soldiers in these battles operate daily across the globe and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture, or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies of America. Funded through "black budgets", Special Operations

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.

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

Ioan Grillo · 321 pages

"The world has watched stunned at the bloodshed in Mexico. Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters, DEA assistance, an

Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with the World's Most Powerful Man

Nick Davies · 430 pages

"The definitive book on how the News of the World phone-hacking scandal reached the highest echelons of power in the government, security, and the media in the UK, from the journalist who broke the story"--

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil

Peter Maass · 276 pages

Oil is the substance that allows our world to work. Over the course of a century it has taken on such a variety of functions that even a small decrease in oil output would cause economic chaos and nightmarish shortages. We know, of course, that this reliance is a disaster but what we are perhaps less clear about is the terrible damage done by oil to those countries that produce it: the people who

The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan

Michael Hastings

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

The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

Carlotta Gall · 368 pages

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

Anand Gopal · 320 pages

"As U.S. troops prepare to withdraw, the shocking tale of how the American military had triumph in sight in Afghanistan--and then brought the Taliban back from the dead. In the popular imagination, Afghanistan is often regarded as the site of intractable conflict, the American war against the Taliban a perpetually hopeless quagmire. But as Anand Gopal demonstrates in this stunning chronicle, top T

A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption & Death in Putin's Russia

Anna Politkovskaya · 323 pages

Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's most fearless journalists, was gunned down in a contract killing in Moscow in the fall of 2006. Just before her death, Politkovskaya completed this searing, intimate record of life in Russia from the parliamentary elections of December 2003 to the grim summer of 2005, when the nation was still reeling from the horrors of the Beslan school siege. In A Russian Dia

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.

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire

Tim Schwab · 496 pages

Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild

Greg Palast · 402 pages

The "top journalist in America and the funniest" (Randi Rhodes, Air America), takes his previous New York Times bestseller a step further with hot undercover dispatches— hanging out the dirty underpants of the "armed and dangerous clowns that rule us."A White House spokesman said, "We hate that sonovabitch." They're not alone: From corporate suites to Osama's cave, they fear what Britain's Guardia

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Matt Taibbi · 432 pages

"Matt Taibbi's genius is in untangling complex stories and making us care about them by providing striking moral clarity and a genuine sense of outrage. He has become among the most read journalists in America, leading the dialogue with epic Rolling Stone pieces that offer an "almost startling reminder of the power of good writing" (Washington Post). In this new work, he once again takes readers i

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

Jonathan Blitzer · 544 pages

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

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

Jason Stearns · 416 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 Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

George Packer · 512 pages

"The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassins' Gate - the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The consequences of that policy are shown in

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Steve Coll · 704 pages

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

Chalmers Johnson · 394 pages