The sub-prime mortgage crisis is only the beginning: A more profound economic and political restructuring is on its way.

We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions.

According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it.

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to happen. After the crash our priorities will be quite different. But things are likely to get worse before they better. Whether you are an active investor, a homeowner, or a contributor to your 401(k) plan, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown will be indispensable to understanding the gross excess that has put the world economy on the brink--and what the new landscape will look like.

Chapter 01: The Death of Liberalism
Chapter 02: Wall Street Finds Religion
Chapter 03: Bubble Land, Practice Runs
Chapter 04: A Wall of Money
Chapter 05: A Tsunami of Dollars
Chapter 06: The Great Unwinding
Chapter 07: Winners and Losers
Chapter 08: Recovering Balance

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Charles R. Morris - The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Cra sh (2008).pdf

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Jan Nederveen Pieterse - Is There Hope for Uncle S am, Beyond the American Bubble (2008).jpg

For over a century now, America has dominated global politics and the global imagination. Yet as the dollar declines, inequality increases, rates of consumption are unprecedented and American unilateralism comes under fire, such hegemony is increasingly unsustainable. In this provocative new book, leading sociologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse asks whether it’s possible for America to chart a different course. In this book, he argues that correcting the course of decline would mean taking drastic steps. Only a reinvention of New Deal politics could address social inequality, while repositioning itself in world politics would mean adopting genuine multilateralism.

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Jan Nederveen Pieterse - Is There Hope for Uncle S am, Beyond the American Bubble (2008).pdf

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John McQuaid & Mark Schleifstein - Path of Destruc tion, The Devastation of New Orleans and the Comin g Age of Superstorms (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - John McQuaid Mark Schleifstein - Path of Destruction,...of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms 2006.jpg

America and the world were stunned in August 2005 as Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed New Orleans. Shocking images seared the national consciousness: a city under water; entire families pulled from holes chopped in rooftops; children begging for water outside the convention center; hundreds of people waiting for days in hundred-degree heat alongside an interstate for buses that seemed never to arrive. To grasp how Katrina could happen in twenty-first-century America, you have to understand the untold backstory of the catastrophe, from New Orleans’s centuries-long flirtation with disaster, to the heroic attempts by a handful of local scientists and officials to sound warning bells, to the ignorant and misguided decisions by politicians, bureaucrats, and engineers that set the stage for the catastrophe. In Path Of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms (Little, Brown and Company; August 16, 2006; $25.99), John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, give a full account of the storm and the dreadful inadequacies that existed prior to 2005, an indictment of the officials at all levels who failed to act, and a scientific investigation into why these huge storms have only just begun.

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John McQuaid & Mark Schleifstein - Path of Destruc tion, The Devastation of New Orleans and the Comin g Age of Superstorms (2006).pdf

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Robert P. Smith, Peter Zheutlin - Riches Among the Ruins, Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Glob al Economy (2009).jpg

USA Books1 - Robert P. Smith, Peter Zheutlin - Riches Among the Ru...ntures in the Dark Corners of the Global Economy 2009.jpg

Today, Robert P. Smith is a legend in the world of finance. Part adventurer and part economic warrior, this Indiana Jones of the financial world was an advance man for the forces of globalization, having spent more than thirty years traveling through five continents, buying and selling high risk securities in the world's most downtrodden economies. So tenuous was his operation and so covert the transactions, that an overnight fluctuation in a country's currency rate could mean the difference between a spectacular profit or a devastating loss. Today, the trade in emerging market debt is worth more than five billion dollars a day, but it was virtually non-existent when Smith, a one-time collections lawyer, pioneered the business in the late 1970s. "Riches Among the Ruins" is the extraordinary story of Robert Smith's search to make money doing the riskiest kind of business. We are at his side as he travels through the treacherous and exhilarating world of the debt trader, dodging bullets and roadside bombs in post-Saddam Iraq, and risking his life on the chaotic streets of Nigeria. As he engages in a battle of wills with businessmen in Istanbul, and loses millions overnight in the ruins of the post-Soviet Russian economy, we experience all of the thrill and terror that accompanies making big money in emerging markets. At once adrenaline-fueled and utterly compelling, this is the gripping story of one man's quest for fortune where others fear to tread.

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Robert P. Smith, Peter Zheutlin - Riches Among the Ruins, Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Glob al Economy (2009).pdf

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Howard Jones - Crucible of Power, A History of Ame rican Foreign Relations from 1897, Second Edit (20 08).jpeg

In this updated edition of Crucible of Power, Howard Jones has included a number of revisions and additions aimed at making the book more attractive to students, teachers, and general readers. A new final chapter brings the story of America's foreign relations as close to the present as possible by focusing on President George W. Bush and his dealing with 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the global war on terrorism. Among other changes, every chapter now has at least one excerpt from a key document of the period, allowing the reader to examine historical evidence firsthand in hopes of providing a feel for the period involved, promoting an understanding of history through the eyes of its participants, and showing how the historian determines the important facts relevant to reconstructing a meaningful narrative.

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Howard Jones - Crucible of Power, A History of Ame rican Foreign Relations from 1897, Second Edit (20 08).pdf

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Christopher Paul - Marines on the Beach, The Polit ics of U.S, Military Intervention Decision Making (2008).jpg

USA Books1 - Christopher Paul - Marines on the Beach, The Politics ...cs of U.S, Military Intervention Decision Making 2008.jpg

Paul explores both how and why U.S. military intervention decisions are made. Pursuit of that inquiry requires the identification of decision participants, thorough examination of the decision making processes they employ, and recognition of several factors that influence intervention decisions: the national interest, legitimacy, and the legacies of previous policies. This book provides chapter length treatment of each of these issues. The research is based on detailed historical case studies for the four U.S. Marines on the beach military interventions in Latin America since World War II: The Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), and Haiti (1994). Additional cases (notably Afghanistan and Iraq) enter the discussion when considering findings with broader implications.

Of the existing theories of governance that compete to explain government policy making, Paul finds that elite theory provides the best general model for intervention decision making, but that the notions of both pluralist and class theorists contribute to a complete explanation, and sometimes in an unexpected way. Findings also indicate considerable contribution from and constraint by institutional sources. However, far from finding that institutional factors are wholly deterministic, this research offers support for a choice-within-constraints model. Conclusions suggest that top decision-makers (especially the president) enjoy wide latitude in framing the national interest and in choosing where to and where not to intervene.

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Christopher Paul - Marines on the Beach, The Polit ics of U.S, Military Intervention Decision Making (2008).pdf

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Dan Briody - The Halliburton Agenda, The Politics of Oil and Money (2005).jpg

The author of the bestseller The Iron Triangle untangles a web of political back scratching in one of the world's most powerful companies
Halliburton-a Texas oil-field company Dick Cheney ran before he became Vice President-has courted controversy for the better part of the twentieth century, but only recently has it received intense media scrutiny. In The Halliburton Agenda, Halliburton and its subsidiaries form the foundation of a fascinating story of influence peddling and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that has only increased in momentum over the last decade-culminating in a firestorm of problems arising as soon as Cheney took office.
This intriguing book shows readers where Halliburton has been doing business and with whom-topping the list so far are Iran, Iraq, and Libya. It also reveals how this juggernaut of a corporation has engaged in a cycle of profits that begins by selling products and services to potential terrorist states, contracting with the federal government during times of war against those states, then gaining valuable rebuilding contracts to help repair those states. It will also show how a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown

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Dan Briody - The Halliburton Agenda. The Politics of Oil and Money.pdf

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Lindsey Williams - Syndrome of Control (1986).jpeg

This is Lindsey Williams' explosive book Syndrome of Control (1986) which exposes the mental plot of the international financiers who are holding America and the rest of the world captive by falsely inflated oil prices and how such totalitarian economic control is used to forment countless wars around the globe. If you have ever wondered who really controls the oil prices and why they sometimes suddenly change although nothing seems to imply that they should then you'll be amazed on how the trick really works. The truth is that they are completely artificially fluctuated by a few powerful cartels together with international bankers in order to create the psychological environment which usually pushes the oil users (that's all of us) into war, first in line always being the Americans as the most useful idiots the bankers have. The author has seen personally what goes on behind the scenes as he was himself in executive positions in many major oil companies. You will vividly see the mechanics of creating a war by using oil monopolies as a weapon. Even more, by revealing the true nature of today's money it is shown that money itself is one giant racket in this horrific game we call war. The politicans will always comply to anything the cartels and bankers tell them as they don't want to risk any major panic since people want to continue running their cars more than they love their freedoms. This amazing book includes material exposed by US congressman George Hansen on the Iranian hostage crisis, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, former US president Carter and the Iran banker's war. Especially noteworthy is Hansen's contribution as he for the first time in print tells the true story of the Iran crisis and who was really behind it. Also has an enlightening comparison of a republic vs. a democracy and how the first one always gives freedom to people while the second always ends in slavery although everyone blindly believes they are free. 210 pages. A must read for everyone.

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Lindsey Williams - Syndrome of Control (1986).pdf

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Russell S. Bowen - The Immaculate Deception, The B ush Crime Family Exposed (1999).jpg

There is a TON of information packed into these 200 pages. Event after event, lie after lie, flip flop after flip flop, covert actions after covert action, and lie after lie, this book weighs in on Bush's historical record.

Is Bush to blame for the escalation of the drug trade? Read this book for some info on the subject. Read how he hid deals and ownerships of companies that he knew violated Mexican laws. How he supported Saddam Hussien, how he partnered with Hussein and Saudi Arabia to keep oil prices high so his family could make more money. How he was involved with the CIA (although he denied it) back in the late 50s and early 60s. What does he know about the Kennedy assassination? He gave a briefy the day after to government officials. He denied being in the Iran-contra loop but he set up the connections for it. He continued to pay Noriega over $100,000 a year while Noriega was stealing U.S. intelligence and running drugs to the United States with CIA cover.

What was his role in the delaying of the Iran Hostages release? A national black mark that folks have not heard enough of. He gave Hussein the go-ahead to invade Kuwait and then attacked him. How he had to be ordered by the Supreme Court to stop lobbying the IRS on behalf of drug companies when he was VP.

The list goes on and on and on and one. Read this book and have your eyes opened. It will entice you to read more on the sad subject of the life or priveledge and abuse of power. And everyone thought Clinton was the worst, when the facts come out on Bush it would be hard to decide who was the worst.

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Russell S. Bowen - The Immaculate Deception, The B ush Crime Family Exposed (1999).pdf

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Francisco Parra - Oil Politics, A Modern History o f Petroleum (2004).jpg

The politics of oil revolves around its price and the reliability of its suppliers. In turn, many international conflicts in the world today are rooted in these politics. Not surprisingly: the price of oil is managed by a cartel-OPEC-some of whose member governments are deeply hostile to the United States and other major importers of oil. And OPEC controls nearly two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. Ironically, the United States and many others, especially non-OPEC producers of energy, have come to rely on OPEC to set prices that encourage the development of high-cost oil elsewhere, and thus promote some diversity of supply.Fundamental to any understanding of the politics of the contemporary world is an understanding of the politics and most recent history of petroleum. Francisco Parra, drawing on his long and varied experience in international oil, sets out the events that have shaped the industry over the past fifty years--the displacement of coal as the world's prime fuel; the tight control of international oil by the seven major oil companies (all US or British), monopolizing production in the Middle East and Venezuela; the rise of OPEC and the ousting of the companies in a bitter struggle in which the companies were abandoned by their home governments; how the world was hypnotized for more than a decade by the delusion of impending depletion; and the political turbulence that has led to wars in the Middle East, to US sanctions on Iran, Iraq, and Libya, and, most recently, to the invasion of Iraq.After a surge in non-OPEC oil production in the 1980s and 1990s, dependence on the Middle East is increasing and OPEC's control over price is volatile. Parra asks whether this enduring predicament-that holds the threat of political conditions being attached to the supply of oil-can be managed by the "West", to avert successive and deepening crises in the pricing and supply of oil and in the world at large.

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Hilary Synnott - Bad Days in Basra, My Turbulent T ime as Britain's Man in Southern Iraq (2008).jpg

This is the story of Sir Hilary Synnott’s time as Britain’s most senior representative in Southern Iraq, from 2003 to 2004, trying to keep the region together as the rest of the country descended in to murderous violence. By turns wryly comic, revealing and heart-breaking, it offers a never seen before glimpse in to the high politics of the occupation. Shuttling between the gilded palaces of the Green Zone and the Coalition HQ in Basra, Synnott had to deal with his American counterpart Paul Bremer's brash indifference to what was going on in the South, the fickleness of his London masters, who could never make up their minds, and the brutal political realities of a country under occupation. Bearing witness for first time to the chaotic fashion in which the coalition was run and the disastrous impact of its policies, Synnott's unique insider account is the most important primary source yet on how Southern Iraq spun out of control. It is also an entertaining and witty portrait of the absurdities of life inside the occupying coalition.

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Pratap Chatterjee - Halliburton's Army, How a Well -Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Wa y America Makes War (2009).jpg

USA Books1 - Pratap Chatterjee - Halliburtons Army, How a Well-Con...Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War 2009.jpg

Halliburton’s Army is the first book to show, in shocking detail, how Halliburton really does business, in Iraq, and around the world. From its vital role as the logistical backbone of the U.S. occupation in Iraq—without Halliburton there could be no war or occupation—to its role in covering up gang-rape amongst its personnel in Baghdad, Halliburton’s Army is a devastating bestiary of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism.

Pratap Chatterjee—one of the world’s leading authorities on corporate crime, fraud, and corruption—shows how Halliburton won and then lost its contracts in Iraq, what Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld did for it, and who the company paid off in the U.S. Congress. He brings us inside the Pentagon meetings, where Cheney and Rumsfeld made the decision to send Halliburton to Iraq—as well as many other hot-spots, including Somalia, Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and, most recently, New Orleans. He travels to Dubai, where Halliburton has recently moved its headquarters, and exposes the company’s freewheeling ways: executives leading the high life, bribes, graft, skimming, offshore subsidiaries, and the whole arsenal of fraud. Finally, Chatterjee reveals the human costs of the privatization of American military affairs, which is sustained almost entirely by low-paid unskilled Third World workers who work in incredibly dangerous conditions without any labor protection.

Halliburton’s Army is a hair-raising exposé of one of the world’s most lethal corporations, essential reading for anyone concerned about the nexus of private companies, government, and war.

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Roger Howard - Iran Oil, The New Middle East Chall enge to America (2007).jpg

The US sees itself as being locked into a confrontation with Iran, its number one enemy since the invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But, as Roger Howard argues in this compelling and provocative new book, by attempting to isolate Iran, the US may in fact be undermining its own power. Furthermore, because of US trade embargoes on Iran, it is only the US's rivals, such as China, who are able to fully exploit Iran's natural resources...

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Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought, The Tra nsformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007).jpg

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in What Hath God Wrought, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent.

Howe's panoramic narrative portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America's economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party, but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs--advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans--were the true prophets of America's future. He reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women's rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe's story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.
By 1848 America had been transformed. What Hath God Wrought provides a monumental narrative of this formative period in United States history.

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Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought, The Tra nsformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007).pdf

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David E. Sanger - The Inheritance, The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (2 009).jpg

Readers of The New York Times know David Sanger as one of the most trusted correspondents in Washington, one to whom presidents, secretaries of state, and foreign leaders talk with unusual candor. Now, with a historian’s sweep and an insider’s eye for telling detail, Sanger delivers an urgent intelligence briefing on the world America faces.

In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office.

Sanger takes readers into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran’s nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, in his last year, to secretly step up covert actions in a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy–while receiving billions in American military aid. Now the new president faces critical choices: Is it better to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or risk overt or covert confrontation? Is it worth sending U.S. forces deep into Pakistani territory at the risk of undermining an unstable Pakistani government sitting on a nuclear arsenal? It is a race against time and against a new effort by Islamic extremists—never before disclosed—to quietly infiltrate Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.

“Bush wrote a lot of checks,” one senior intelligence official told Sanger, “that the next president is going to have to cash.”

The Inheritance takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence apparatus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington was bogged down in the Middle East. Yet Sanger, a former foreign correspondent in Asia, sees enormous potential for the next administration to forge a partnership with Beijing on energy and the environment.

At once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunities they create, The Inheritance is vital reading for anyone trying to understand the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead.

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Mary Kaldor, Terry Karl, Yahia Said (Editors) Oil Wars (2007).jpg

Are oil-rich countries prone to war? And, if so, why? There is a widely held belief that contemporary wars are motivated by the desire of great powers like the United States or Russia to control precious oil resources and to ensure energy security.This book argues that the main reason why oil-rich countries are prone to war is because of the character of their society and economy. Sectarian groups compete for access to oil resources and finance their military adventures through smuggling oil, kidnapping oil executives, or blowing up pipelines. Outside intervention only makes things worse. The use of conventional military force as in Iraq can bring neither stability nor security of supply.This book examines the relationship between oil and war in six different regions: Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria and Russia. Each country has substantial oil reserves, and has a long history of conflict. The contributors assess what part oil plays in causing, aggravating or mitigating war in each region and how this relation has altered with the changing nature of war. It offers a novel conceptual approach bringing together Kaldor's work on 'new wars' and Karl's work on the petro-state.

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Mary Kaldor, Terry Karl, Yahia Said (Editors) Oil Wars (2007) [PDF].rar

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Susan Faludi - The Terror Dream, Fear and Fantasy in Post 9-11 America(2007).jpg

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash—an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11. In this most original examination of America’s post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country’s psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her acute observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore “traditional” manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling “security moms,” swaggering presidential gunslingers, and the “rescue” of a female soldier cast as a “helpless little girl”?

The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by nonwhite “barbarians” on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.

Brilliant and important, The Terror Dream shows what 9/11 revealed about us—and offers the opportunity to look at ourselves anew.

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Thomas E. Ricks - Fiasco, The American Military Ad venture in Iraq (2006).jpg

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 a masterful and explosive reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq, based on the unprecedented candor of key participants.

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.

As many in the military publicly acknowledge here for the first time, the guerrilla insurgency that exploded several months after Saddam's fall was not foreordained. In fact, to a shocking degree, it was created by the folly of the war's architects. But the officers who did raise their voices against the miscalculations, shortsightedness, and general failure of the war effort were generally crushed, their careers often ended. A willful blindness gripped political and military leaders, and dissent was not tolerated.

There are a number of heroes in Fiasco—inspiring leaders from the highest levels of the Army and Marine hierarchies to the men and women whose skill and bravery led to battlefield success in towns from Fallujah to Tall Afar—but again and again, strategic incoherence rendered tactical success meaningless. There was never any question that the U.S. military would topple Saddam Hussein, but as Fiasco shows there was also never any real thought about what would come next. This blindness has ensured the Iraq war a place in history as nothing less than a fiasco. Fair, vivid, and devastating, Fiasco is a book whose tragic verdict feels definitive.

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