A new history of Assyria, the ancient civilization that set the model for future empiresAt its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield: their vast libraries and monumental sculptures, their elaborate trade and information networks, and the crucial role played by royal women.Although Assyria was crushed by rising powers in the late seventh century BCE, its legacy endured from the Babylonian and Persian empires to Rome and beyond. Assyria is a stunning and authoritative account of a civilization essential to understanding the ancient world and our own.PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. Read more

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction “Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times “Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post "Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air Mail From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a news-breaking investigation into one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons? The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Steve Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap exposes how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it. Read more

A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.It was one of history’s great vanishing acts. Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost. London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up. Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before. From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past. Read more

Fallujah. Few names conjure up as many images of blood, sacrifice, and valor as does this ancient city in Al Anbar province 40 miles west of Baghdad. This sprawling concrete jungle was the scene of two major US combat operations in 2004. The first was Operation Vigilant Resolve, an aborted effort that April by US Marines intent on punishing the city’s insurgents. The second, Operation Phantom Fury, was launched seven months later. Richard Lowry’s New Dawn: The Battles for Fallujah is the first comprehensive history of this fighting.Also known as the Second Battle for Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury was a protracted house-to-house and street-to-street combat that began on November 7 and continued unabated for seven bloody and exhausting weeks. It was the largest fight of operation Iraqi Freedom and the heaviest urban combat since the Battle of Hue City, Vietnam, in 1968. Death and redemption were found everywhere, from narrow streets to courtyards, kitchens, bedrooms, and rooftops. By the time the fighting ended, more than 1,400 insurgents were dead, compared to 95 Americans (and another 1,000 wounded).Lowry (Marines in the Garden of Eden) spent years researching and writing his new campaign history. In addition to archival research, New Dawn is based upon the personal recollections of nearly 200 soldiers and marines who participated in the battles for Fallujah, from the commanding generals who planned the operations to the privates who kicked in the doors. The result is a gripping, pause-resisting narrative of individual sacrifice and valor that also documents the battles for future military historians.The struggle against a determined enemy at the crossroads of civilization is the story of American kids who grew up down the block from you only to fly halfway around the world to fight in the largest battle of the war. New Dawn is about their courage, their sacrifice, and their commitment to freedom. And it is a story you will never forget.“In New Dawn, Richard Lowry presents not just a brilliant account of the battle for Fallujah, but also a useful overview of the history, economics, and culture of the region. Lowry shows what’s great about the US military: skilled and powerful but also humanitarian and ultimately peace-seeking. Lowry’s book is a must-listen for anyone interested in how we won in Iraq.” (Newt Gingrich, best-selling author and former speaker of the House of Representatives) Read more

A tour of an ancient library transports us to Mesopotamia, introducing us to its people, their ideas, and their humanity.   The library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s last great king, held an astonishing collection at the forefront of knowledge in its day, from ancient traditions in religion and literature to the latest developments in magic and medicine. When the Assyrian empire fell, the library burned to the ground, and its contents, clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing, lay buried for thousands of years until a team of Victorian archaeologists discovered the remnants in modern-day Iraq. The clay had baked and hardened; the very fire that consumed the library had helped its texts to survive for millennia.   In The Library of Ancient Wisdom, scholar Selena Wisnom, one of only a few hundred experts able to read cuneiform script today, guides us inside this important collection and, through its contents, brings ancient Mesopotamia and its people to life. Introducing us to Ashurbanipal and his family, scribes, astrologers, physicians, and more, Wisnom explores the library’s tablets and the details they divulge about how these ancient people thought about the world. Like us, they had concerns about job security, jealous rivalries, and profound friendships, and questions about the meaning of life. Wisnom ushers us into a world where magic was commonplace, where the gods spoke to you in dreams, and where the secrets of the universe were revealed through puns—taking us to the heart of what it means to be human.   Offering a close look at a major historical landmark as well as a readable account of the world’s earliest civilizations, The Library of Ancient Wisdom lays bare the ideas, hopes, fears, and desires that survive on humble clay. Read more

From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein had vowed to destroy Israel. So, when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-line nuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiably concerned. The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plant situated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv. By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming "hot," and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin knew he would have to confront its deadly potential. He turned to Israeli Air Force commander General David Ivry to secretly plan a daring surgical air strike on the reactor, a never-before contemplated mission that would prove to be one of the most remarkable military operations of all time. Written with the full and exclusive cooperation of the Israeli Air Force high command, General Ivry (ret.), and all of the eight mission pilots (including Ilan Ramon, who became Israel's first astronaut and tragically perished in the shuttle Columbia disaster), Raid On the Sun tells the extraordinary story of how Israel plotted the unthinkable: defying its U.S. and European allies to eliminate Iraq's nuclear threat. In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, journalist Rodger Claire re-creates a gripping tale of personal sacrifice and survival, of young pilots who trained in America on the then-new, radically sophisticated F-16 fighter-bombers, then faced a nearly insurmountable challenge: how to fly the 1,000-plus-kilometer mission to Baghdad and back on one tank of fuel; he recounts Israeli intelligence's incredible "black ops" to sabotage construction on the French reactor and eliminate Iraqi nuclear scientists; and he gives readers a pilot's-eye view of the action on June 7, 1981, when the planes roared off a runway on the Sinai Peninsula for the first successful destruction of a nuclear reactor in history. Read more

“Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times“Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post"Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air MailFrom bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news-breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our timeWhen the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons?The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam’s rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, Steve Coll traces Saddam’s motives by way of his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader—a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances of his paranoia, resentments, and inconsistencies—even when the stakes were incredibly high.Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it. Read more

Generation Kill is about the young men sent to fight their nation''s first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media simply doesn''t get them. As we all know, news accounts of the last two wars focused almost exclusively on battlefield imagery of high-tech weapons wreaking astounding destruction, comply with analysis from retired army grandees and other experts, punctuated by the odd heart-warming patriotic sound-bite. The troops themselves play a role in the media''s presentation of recent wars rather like extras in The Triumph of the Will. They are everywhere yet somehow invisible. When they speak you get the sense that what they are saying has been carefully scripted. Now Generation Kill tells the soldiers'' story in their own words.The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It''s about surviving death. It''s about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began.Evan Wright was the only reporter with First Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces, usually behind enemy lines. They were among the first marines sent into the fight and one of the last units still engaged on the outskirts of Iraq, even after the city centre fell. Generation Kill is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like Black Hawk Down and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of Band of Brothers. It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry... Read more

New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book (Nonfiction) Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Foreign Policy A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection“Destined to be the classic account of what may be the oldest... hardest form of war.” ―John Nagl, Wall Street JournalInvisible Armies presents an entirely original narrative of warfare, which demonstrates that, far from the exception, loosely organized partisan or guerrilla warfare has been the dominant form of military conflict throughout history. New York Times best-selling author and military historian Max Boot traces guerrilla warfare and terrorism from antiquity to the present, narrating nearly thirty centuries of unconventional military conflicts. Filled with dramatic analysis of strategy and tactics, as well as many memorable characters―from Italian nationalist Guiseppe Garibaldi to the “Quiet American,” Edward Lansdale―Invisible Armies is “as readable as a novel” (Michael Korda, Daily Beast) and “a timely reminder to politicians and generals of the hard-earned lessons of history” (Economist). 70 illustrations; 8 maps Read more

“Riveting. . . a testament to a misconceived war, and to the ease with which ordinary men, under certain conditions, can transform into monsters.”—New York Times Book ReviewThis is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality.Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives.Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century. Read more

Civilization was born eight thousand years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period and explores the political and social systems, as well as the technical and cultural innovations, which made this land extraordinary. At the heart of this book is the story of Babylon, which rose to prominence under the Amorite king Hammurabi from about 1800 BCE. Even as Babylon's fortunes waxed and waned, it never lost its allure as the ancient world's greatest city. Engaging and compelling, Babylon reveals the splendor of the ancient world that laid the foundation for civilization itself. Read more

A unique coming-of-age story from the lost world of Arab-JewsIn July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing their beloved Iraq to the new state of Israel. 'Remarkable.' Max Hastings, THE SUNDAY TIMES Today the once flourishing Jewish community of Iraq, at one time numbering over 130,000 and tracing its history back 2,600 years, has all but vanished. Why so? One explanation speaks of the timeless clash between Arab and Jewish civilisations and a heroic Zionist mission to rescue Eastern Jews from backward nations and unceasing persecution. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His parents had many Muslim friends in Baghdad and no interest in Zionism. As anti-Semitism surged in Iraq, the Zionist underground fanned the flames. Yet when Iraqi Jews fled to Israel, they faced an uncertain future, their history was rewritten to serve a Zionist narrative. This memoir breathes life into an almost forgotten world. Weaving together the personal and the political, Three Worlds offers a fresh perspective on Arab-Jews, caught in the crossfire of Zionism and nationalism. *** A TLS AND NEW STATESMANBOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 A NOVARA BEST BOOK OF 2024 'A beautifully written book which artfully blends the personal with the political.' Justin Marozzi, SPECTATOR 'Three Worlds, by the Oxford historian of the modern Middle East Avi Shlaim, is an often enchanting memoir of his childhood in Baghdad... A gripping account... A lost world in Iraq is brilliantly brought back to life in this fascinating memoir.' David Abulafia, FINANCIAL TIMES Read more

Have you ever had a need so overwhelming and fierce that it became your obsession?Ancient text written centuries ago sends Michael, a time-torn man, searching the deepest sands of Iraq, drawn to an archeological dig in the cradle of civilization to find his divine artifacts.Meanwhile, Julitta, a student of ancient religions, is thrilled to travel to the Middle East, expanding her experience and resume. But when she arrives, she encounters Michael, who seems to bring whispers across the sand, voices of humans, demons, and fallen angels, leaving her grasping at reality... and inspiring the birth of an angel. Read more

A war memoir that will capture the hearts of its readers, just as one scruffy puppy sneaked his way into the hearts of hardened Marines just when they needed it most. Read more

From the former USA Today journalist and author of The Chosen Few, the untold story of The Battle of Ramadi, which led to a war that would last seven years, claim thousands of lives and evolve into a traumatic legacy for the US military and its veterans. Their nickname was the Magnificent Bastards and they were warriors without a war. Kept stateside after 9/11 and left floating in the Pacific during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the thousand Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment were told they were bench-warmers as America sent troops into combat. But war was waiting. Iraq would explode in violence exactly one year after a U.S. led Coalition swept into Baghdad and the Magnificent Bastards would find themselves at the epicenter. When the battalion first arrived in the provincial capital of Ramadi, Iraq, in February of 2004, they were thrust into a savage battle where hundreds of insurgents organized a three-day offensive aimed at driving the Marines out of their city of 400,000. In Unremitting, journalist Gregg Zoroya tells the fast-paced, dramatic, and meticulously-researched story of the battle that truly began the Iraq War. Capturing the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle, Zoroya explores this vital part of American military history and beyond, showing how Ramadi was not just a game-changer for the Iraq War, but also for the marines, sailors, and soldiers who fought it, the trauma remaining with survivors more than two decades later. Read more

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker • Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction“Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times“Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post"Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air MailFrom bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a news-breaking investigation into one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time.When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons?The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Steve Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap exposes how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it. Read more

As the Commander of U.S. Central Command, General Frank McKenzie oversaw some of the most important — and controversial — operations in modern U.S. military history. He had direct operational responsibility for the strikes on Qassem Soleimani and two successive leaders of ISIS, the many months of deterrence operations against Iran and its proxies, and the methodical drawdown in Iraq. He directed the noncombatant evacuation operation in Afghanistan, and our final withdrawal from that tortured country.    The Melting Point has three themes. The first one is the importance of the primacy of civilian control of the military. It has become a widely perceived truth that this control has been eroded over the past few years. General McKenzie doesn’t believe that to be the case, and he speaks with some authority on the matter arguing that the civ-mil relationship isn’t perfect or frictionless, but it doesn’t have to be, and probably shouldn’t be. It is, however, more durable than many believe, and is supported and embraced by the military to a degree that some critics do not choose to recognize.    The second theme is the uniqueness of being a combatant commander. Combatant commanders participate in the development of policy, although as junior partners.  They are also responsible for the execution of policy once civilian leaders have formulated their decision, a unique position, and very different than the role of a service chief, or even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. None of these officers are in the chain of command, and they have no ultimate, mortal responsibility or authority for execution. Only the combatant commander stands astride the boundary of decision-making and execution.    Finally, the third theme that McKenzie argues is that leaders matter, and the decisions they make have a profound effect on what happens on the battlefield. McKenzie provides an honest assessment of his time in command—describing decisions that were sound, as well as some outcomes he wishes were different. He offers a vivid portrait of leadership in action in one of the most volatile regions of the world.  Read more

An incisive narrative history of the Islamic State, from the 2005 master plan to reestablish the Caliphate to its quest for Final Victory in 2020"With its original and powerful analysis, The Master Plan should be required reading for anyone attempting to understand both ISIS and al-Qaeda and the implications for contemporary global security."—Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact, it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly. In fact, al-Qaeda’s operations chief, Sayf al-Adl, devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, al-Adl’s plan has proved remarkably prescient. In summer 2014, ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul, Iraq—part of stage five in al-Adl’s plan. Drawing on large troves of recently declassified documents captured from the Islamic State and its predecessors, counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman tells the story of this organization’s complex and largely hidden past—and what the master plan suggests about its future. Only by understanding the Islamic State’s full history—and the strategy that drove it—can we understand the contradictions that may ultimately tear it apart. Read more

If you're looking for a captivating collection of Mesopotamian myths, then keep reading... This book includes two captivating manuscripts: Mesopotamian Mythology: A Captivating Guide to Ancient Near Eastern MythsSumerian Mythology: Captivating Myths of Gods, Goddesses, and Legendary Creatures of Ancient Sumer and Their Importance to the Sumerians In the first part of this book, you'll find the following Mesopotamian myths and topics covered Creation MythsTales of Gods and GoddessesSelections from the Epic of GilgameshAnd much, much more!In the second part of this book, you'll find the following Sumerian myths and topics covered Tales of Gods and GoddessesTales of Kings and HeroesInanna and the Huluppu TreeEnkidu in the UnderworldGilgamesh and HuwawaGilgamesh and AgaAnd much, much more!So if you want a captivating collection of Mesopotamian myths, click the “add to cart” button! Read more

“Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times“Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post"Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air MailFrom bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news-breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our timeWhen the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons?The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam’s rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, Steve Coll traces Saddam’s motives by way of his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader—a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances of his paranoia, resentments, and inconsistencies—even when the stakes were incredibly high.Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it. Read more