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The Assassins' Gate
- America in Iraq
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
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Publisher's summary
Rich in history and political insight, this is an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue over the Iraq War. George Packer describes the players and ideas behind the Bush administration's war policy. He also provides first-hand accounts of the men and women, both civilian and military, coalition and Iraqi, who are caught in the middle of the conflict.
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award, George Packer is a venerated staff writer for The New Yorker with four tours on assignment in Iraq. With The Assassins' Gate, he offers a penetrating work of journalism.
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Critic reviews
"[A] well-researched, articulate, journalistic account." (School Library Journal)
"Packer shows himself once more to be the best chronicler, apart perhaps from John Burns of the New York Times, that the conflict has produced." (Publishers Weekly)
"It is a pleasure to find a work that strives for balance, fairness, and understanding in surveying the causes and course of the ongoing Iraqi war....This is a troubling but deeply moving examination." (Booklist)
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Egypt has long set the paradigm for Arab autocracy. It is the keeper of the peace with Israel and the cornerstone of the American-backed regional order. So when Egyptians rose up to demand democracy in 2011, their 30 months of freedom convulsed the whole region. Now a new strongman, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is building a dictatorship so severe some call it totalitarian. The economy sputters, an insurgency simmers, Christians suffer, and the Israeli military has been forced to intervene. But some in Washington - including President Trump - applaud Sisi as a crucial ally.
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may get better, but presentation is off putting
- By Fruggs on 08-28-18
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War on Peace
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American diplomacy is under siege. Offices across the State Department sit empty while abroad, the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We're becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later. In an astonishing account ranging from Washington, DC, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea in the years since 9/11, acclaimed journalist and former diplomat Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history.
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Well Timed and Authoritative:
- By JC on 04-24-18
By: Ronan Farrow
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The Good Spy
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The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history - a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West. On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East - CIA operative Robert Ames.
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Biased but interesting
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The Prince of the Marshes
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Told from Stewart's distinctly Western perspective, The Prince of the Marshes chronicles his time acting as the deputy governor of two southern Iraqi provinces.
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A View From The Real Iraq
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Thirteen Days in September
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A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the first peace treaty in the modern Middle East, one which endures to this day.
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Lessons in Negotiation
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The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from 42 years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong.
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amazing yet painful book
- By Ghassan Tranesh on 09-20-18
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The Fall of Heaven
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In this remarkably human portrait of one of the 20th century's most complicated personalities, author Andrew Scott Cooper traces Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's life from childhood through his ascension to the throne in 1941. He highlights the turbulence of the postwar era, during which the shah survived assassination attempts and coup plots to build a modern, pro-Western state and launch Iran onto the world stage as one of the world's top five powers.
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Excellent account of a pivotal and sad time
- By Guerin Shea on 09-05-16
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What listeners say about The Assassins' Gate
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Florafolly
- 09-27-08
Very observant
Packer is a very observant and astute journalist. The Assassin's gate will give you an excellent impression of the human experiences were like in Iraq and how strategic decisions affected them. Generally he is not partisan or bias.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Drapeau
- 02-01-07
Highly Recommended
I've been making a sad trek through some of the books written about the disaster in Iraq. This is the best of the lot. Packer has masterfully combined several books into one: a long historical view, a devastating account of what went wrong, and a deeply empathetic portrait of several people whose lives have been changed by the war. To top it off, Richard Poe gives an outstanding reading performance.
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18 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kenneth
- 03-24-07
If you liked/respected Fiasco...
This is one of those books that will require the author to rewrite the foreword for it with every re-release...I really think this (audio)book is a easily digestible but very scholarly work. The reader isn't too somber but serious enough to respect the subject matter. (If you can hear it there are a few instances where you can hear the reader take a sip of water and resume reading....kinda personal in a good way)....The chapter breakdown is great too...If only all audio books were broken up into as many sections.....
If you think there are too many books out on Iraq...read 3. This one, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, and Fiasco...I hear Cobra II is pretty epic...but c'mon it costs 2 credits!
All in all a great balanced read that provides a ideo/philosophical backdrop for what the (hell) the policy planners were thinking.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Anonymous User
- 05-26-07
Assassin's Gate
The book gives great insight to the Iraq conflict and should be read (or listened to) by all Americans. The book has stories about average Iraqis, and how their attitudes towards the American occupation changes overtime. Packer points out that as mistakes where made, trust on both sides was lost. The problems in Iraqi have been brewing for decades to centuries and will not be easily resolved.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Margaret C Britt
- 07-04-07
worth a second listen
If you want to understand what went wrong in Iraq, this is a good place to start. Packer begins in Iraq and backtracks to Washington where the neocons are busy trying to con the American people and stifle their critics. One of the most moving sections is devoted to a family who has lost a son in Iraq and is left wondering who and what to believe.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michael Friedman
- 03-25-16
A Fine View of the War in Iraq
Part history, part memoir, this book details the utter folly of the Bush administration in underestimating and ultimately destroying the country of Iraq through lack of planning, unrealistic vision and lack of understanding of the consequences of the toppling of the Saddam regime. It is a sad commentary on the stupidity and ignorance of the top officials of the bush administration and a president who was oblivious to the reality of what he did and his utter failure to plan for the inevitable. Mr. Packer writes well, and his vision is more balanced than one would expect. That makes his commentary and conclusions even more poignant. The decade since this book was written has not diminished his conclusions.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- jr smith
- 03-28-09
At Last
The book was well written and it gave me a look into the war from all sides. I have a picture of the guards of said gate in a 20 x 30 size that was sent to us.
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1 person found this helpful
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- C moore
- 05-31-16
great work!
this was a good book. I like the drama and the narration and story or expertly done. haunting and riveting Cigna on soldiers service and this time the same high level talks at the Whitehouse.
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Overall
- Michael
- 03-18-07
Lots of Facts for Subpoenas! Boring to Outsiders.
Ok. So Packer certainly confirmed my suspicions. Cheney got what he wanted -- a war in Iraq at all costs. No big surprise, I suppose.
What did surprise me was the detail he throws at the reader/listener -- it makes it tough for someone not to believe he did his research. But then I'm left wondering how could he be so intimately connected with SO many inside meetings and discussions. Obviously this guy is connected. Or he is filling in the gaps with his theories?
This book was unboubtedly written to settle a score -- set the record straight. He certainly will have made some enemies, and perhaps burned a few of his very important future-book-research sources.
However, I'm one of those 298 million that live OUTSIDE the (Washington) beltway, and admittedly not "in the know" about the who's who of Washington insiders. Accordingly, much of the facts of the book started to drone away in my ears and I found myself less and less likely to want to turn this tome back on. Being just a "Meet the Press" sort of political junkie, I don't really have enough of a personal knowledge of the cast of characters (and certainly not first-hand) as he does. If I WERE one of the 150 or so of the people he mentions, perhaps I would be more interested.
To be sure - I believe he lays out enough detail that a democratically controlled congress may finally have their way in nailing some of these arrogant so-and-so's (please, please get Cheney first!). There is ample fodder for subpoenas here. But that's the problem with the book - it is less of an engaging and riveting story and more of a listing of who to prosecute and in what order (which I applaud).
I rate this book a major bore -- unless you're a political fanatic (likely democratic), you may not finish it.
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14 people found this helpful