Review by New York Times Review
DIRECTORATE S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Steve Coll. (Penguin, $18.) Coll, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, delves into the miscalculations that guided military campaigns in Afghanistan after 9/11. Washington's strained relationships with the Afghan and Pakistani governments only exacerbated the problems, Coll writes in his excellent, engrossing account. THE FRIEND, by Sigrid Nunez. (Riverhead, $16.) After the suicide of a friend, an unnamed writer living in a tiny apartment inherits his Great Dane. The arrival of the dog - whose size ^ matches the despair she feels - helps allay her sorrow, and the book expands to include meditations on sex, mentorship and the writing life. Nunez's charming novel won the National Book Award in 2018. WE CROSSED A BRIDGE AND IT TREMBLED: Voices From Syria, by Wendy Pearlman. (Custom House/Morrow, $16.99.) Between 2012 and 2016, Pearlman visited Syrian refugees across the Middle East and Europe and collected their stories of the war. Translated and shaped into a narrative by Pearlman, the accounts are a formidable contribution to the body of literature about this nearly-eight-year war. TRENTON MAKES, by Tadzio Koelb. (Anchor, $16.95.) In 1940s New Jersey, a wife kills and dismembers her abusive husband, assumes his identity and carries on living as a man. To complete the transformation, "Abe" finds work in a factory, remarries and even manages to impregnate his new wife. Our reviewer, William Giraldi, called the book "a novel of bewitching ingenuity, one whose darkling, melodic mind conceives a world of ruin and awe, a sensibility cast in sepia or else in a pall of vying grays." WHO WE ARE AND HOW WE GOT HERE: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, by David Reich. (Vintage, $16.95.) The Harvard scientist uses information extracted from ancient DNAto explain new, and occasionally shocking, facts about our ancestors. The book reconstructs the histories of modern Europeans, Indians, Native Americans, East Asians and Africans, and later, takes up the contentious subjects of race and identity. HAPPINESS, by Aminatta Foma. (Grove, $16.) In London, a Ghanaian psychologist and an American studying the city's foxes collide on a bridge, and their ensuing friendship is deepened by the private grief they each carry. As our reviewer, Melanie Finn, put it, "Forna's finely structured novel powerfully succeeds on a more intimate scale as its humane characters try to navigate scorching everyday cruelties."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Coll's (Private Empire, 2012) investigation into the U.S.' entanglement with Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001 to 2016 chronicles the American campaign to oust al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan after 9/11. Despite assistance from 59 countries, thousands of lives lost, and billions of dollars spent, the effort failed. Strategic bungling and distraction from the war in Iraq helped sink the effort, but the shadow opponent was the Pakistani secret service, the I.S.I., and its covert support of the Taliban through its secretive wing, Directorate S. The sequel to Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars (2004) details the monstrous costs in battlefield casualties, civilian deaths from military action and CIA drone attacks, and murders of American and NATO troops by Afghan soldiers recruited by the Taliban. To staunch the carnage, America negotiated with both the I.S.I. and, in secret, the Taliban. Believing America would eventually abandon Afghanistan, the I.S.I. never withdrew support of Afghanistan's Taliban, even as the terrorists mounted bloody attacks in Pakistan itself. Coll has interviewed players in the Bush and Obama administrations, Afghan and Pakistani officials, spies, diplomats, and soldiers on the ground. With his evenhanded approach, gift for limning character, and dazzling reporting skills, he has created an essential work of contemporary history.--Gwinn, Mary Ann Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Coll (Private Empire), dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, picks up where his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars left off, offering what is perhaps the most comprehensive work to date on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The book takes its title from the department, also known as "S Wing," in Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) that is charged with undertaking illegal operations, including those related to Afghanistan. Based on hundreds of interviews and primary source documents, the work focuses on the secret struggle between the ISI and the CIA as both institutions sought to operate in the divergent interests of their countries, while simultaneously appearing to cooperate. Coll makes the crucial point that the success or failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan has always been inextricably tied to the success or failure of the U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Among the book's many virtues, it avoids adopting a U.S.-centric view. The policies, interests, and important figures of the three nations and (to a lesser extent) the Taliban are all given appropriate weight. Coll's vital work provides a factual and analytical foundation for all future work on the Afghan War and U.S. policy in Central Asia. Maps. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The acclaimed journalist delivers "a second volume" of the history he recounted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars (2004).Based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of documents, New Yorker staff writer Coll's (Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, 2012, etc.) latest journalistic masterpiece "seeks to provide a thorough, reliable history of how the C.I.A., I.S.I., and Afghan intelligence agencies influenced the rise of a new war in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and how that war fostered a revival of Al Qaeda, allied terrorist networks, and eventually, branches of the Islamic state." Coll succeeds on all levels, and his prodigious research leads to only one conclusion: while the United States has won some battles in the so-called war on terror, it has unquestionably lost the war while feeding the radical fires of countless terrorists. The author demonstrates what he has suggested previously and what dozens of other authors have learned: that the U.S. has largely destroyed Afghanistan while trying to save it, similar to what occurred during the Vietnam War. The most prominent actor in this second volume is Pakistan. There are numerous examples of Pakistani factions promising to assist the American-led war on terror only to break promises while raking in billions of dollars in foreign aid. Whether the administration is that of George W. Bush or Barack Obama, the author's reporting demonstrates countless foolish decisions by the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. The State Department comes across as slightly less foolish but not devoid of criticism. Coll is masterful at plumbing the depths of agencies and sects within both Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the murderous groups that have become the main targets of the war on terror. The cast of characters at the beginning of the book will help readers keep track of all the players.In this era of fake news, Coll remains above it all, this time delivering an impeccably researched history of "diplomacy at the highest levels of government in Washington, Islamabad, and Kabul." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
