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The Endgame
- The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 32 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's summary
Eagerly anticipated in the wake of their national best seller Cobra II ("The superb, must-read military history of the invasion of Iraq" - Thomas L. Friedman), The Endgame is Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor's most ambitious and news-breaking book to date. A peerless work of investigative journalism and historical recreation ranging from 2003 to 2012, it gives us the first comprehensive, inside account of arguably the most widely reported yet least understood war in American history - from the occupation of Iraq to the withdrawal of American troops.
Prodigiously researched, The Endgame is not only based on an abundance of highly classified, still-secret government documents but is also brilliantly informed by access to key figures in the White House, the military, the State and Defense departments, and the intelligence community. Most strikingly, it is also informed by extensive interviews with both Sunni and Shiite leaders, key Kurdish politicians, tribal sheikhs, former insurgents, Sadrists, and senior Iraqi military officers, whose insights about critical turning points and previously unknown decisions made during the war have heretofore been conspicuously missing from the media's coverage of it.
The Endgame is riveting as a blow-by-blow chronicle of the fighting. It is also relentlessly revealing, as it deftly pieces together the puzzle of the prosecution of American, Iraqi, and Iranian objectives, and the diplomatic intrigue and political struggle within Iraq since the American invasion.
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- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 26 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.
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An Exceptional Accomplishment
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88 Days to Kandahar
- A CIA Diary
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- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In his gripping narrative, we meet General Tommy Franks, who bridles at CIA control of "his" war; General "Jafar Amin", a gruff Pakistani intelligence officer who saves Grenier from committing career suicide; Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's brilliant ambassador to the US, who tries to warn her government of the al-Qaeda threat; "Mark", the CIA operator who guides GulAgha Shirzai to bloody victory over the Taliban.
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Honest conclusion based on practical realities.
- By rehman on 03-30-15
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Descent into Chaos
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- By: Ahmed Rashid
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
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Rashid examines Central Asia, and the corridors of power in Washington and Europe, to see how the promised nation building in the region has progressed. His conclusions are devastating.
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Useful!
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The Insurgents
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Based on previously unavailable documents and interviews with more than 100 key players, including General David Petraeus, The Insurgents unfolds against the backdrop of two wars waged against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main insurgency is the one led at home by a new generation of officers - including Petraeus, John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and H. R. McMaster - who were seized with an idea on how to fight these kinds of "small wars" and who adapted their enemies' techniques to overhaul their own army.
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How to fight a war and win
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Pakistan on the Brink
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- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
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What are the possibilities—and hazards—facing America as it withdraws from Afghanistan and reviews its long engagement in Pakistan? Where is the Taliban now in both of these countries? What does the immediate future hold, and what are America’s choices going forward? These are some of the crucial questions that Ahmed Rashid—Pakistan’s preeminent journalist—takes on in this follow-up to his acclaimed Descent into Chaos.
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A Very Long NPR-like Interview and History Lesson
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The War Within
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As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, Bob Woodward takes listeners deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial back channels, distrust, and determination within the White House, Pentagon, State Department, intelligence agencies, and U.S. military headquarters in Iraq.
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Too short the story...
- By Mr. Miint on 10-21-08
By: Bob Woodward
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Obama's Wars
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Working behind the scenes for 18 months, Bob Woodward has written the most intimate and sweeping portrait of President Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret war in Pakistan, and the worldwide fight against terrorism.
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Woodward Does a Service
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Shadow Strike
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- By: Yaakov Katz
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
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On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel’s operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation.
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Important Book!
- By Gerald J. Vogt on 05-10-19
By: Yaakov Katz
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The Twilight War
- The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
- By: David Crist
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 25 hrs and 22 mins
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For the past three decades, the United States and Iran have been engaged in an unacknowledged secret war. This conflict has frustrated five American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations to the brink of open warfare. Drawing upon unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several US administrations, David Crist, a senior historian in the federal government, breaks new ground in virtually every section of The Twilight War.
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Most authoritative book on conflict on Iran, hands down.
- By David Free on 07-14-19
By: David Crist
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The Iran Wars
- Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East
- By: Jay Solomon
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
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The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels - military, financial, and covert. Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict - from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern.
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Titled Towards Confrontation
- By Jim on 03-19-17
By: Jay Solomon
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What listeners say about The Endgame
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- Michael Heinsohn
- 09-01-19
good listen
I really enjoy the narrator, the story was amazingly accurate, I also learned a llbit from the upper echelons I had no idea about. ☝️☝️
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- Phillip
- 12-22-12
Detailed accounting of U.S. experience in Iraq
I'm surprised at some of the low ratings of this book, particularly of the narration. I thought Rob Shapiro did an excellent job with difficult material.
I thought the book was very well-researched, detailed and fair. The vast number of names and places -- not to mention the length -- may be daunting, but if you stick with it, you'll learn A LOT. At least I did. Together with Contra II (the authors' previous book on Iraq), you get a full accounting of 2002-2011.
If you're interested in Iraq, I'd recommend many sources, but would definitely include this book as essential.
Recommended.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Benjamin
- 02-09-14
Interesting Perspective, but One-Sided
First let me say that this is a necessary book if you are looking to get informed about the Iraq War, but it is not enough on its own because the breadth and depth of the topic cannot be contained in one book. The battalion and brigade viewpoint of this book are certainly enough to make it a worthwhile read. It serves as an excellent play-by-play and the inclusion of the individual service member stories make it a perspective that often goes uncovered.
Additionally, the inside baseball of Iraqi politics is an essential piece of this story and is expertly woven into the exposition of the US military moves. While the coverage of all the players is burdensome in audiobook format, it is necessary, and if you can remember who did what, very enlightening.
Gordon and Trainor’s access to classified materials is mostly a good thing, but can lead them astray. Their access to the JSOC operations and the intelligence efforts against the Quds Force and the interdiction of Explosively Formed Projectiles built in Iran answers a lot of questions. You would not get this view just from reading the news. On the down side, they tend cite classified materials whenever possible even when it doesn’t add much to the book -- seemingly to trumpet their unprecedented access.
Though insightful, this book is not the definitive work on the Iraq War. Because of some biases and perspective limitations you will need to reach outside to get a better picture. The two shortcomings are political views and holding too closely to the insider’s perspective.
First the political: There is little criticism of President Bush’s handling of the war. Enough is said about Franks’s leaving Sanchez understaffed and unprepared and Bremer’s failures, but is not connected with the Bush administration’s world view of how this war would unfold and how long we would be involved. Bush’s administration posited that it would be over quickly, it would be cheap, and we’d all be home by Christmas. This drove the initial strategy, and it was a train wreck. But who gets the blame in the book? Bremer, Sanchez and Casey. Granted, all three men had their share of blame, but Bush is painted very heroically. At one point Bush is described as “steadfastly maintain[ing] a position of ambiguity,” where others might have been unclear, obfuscating, or vacillating. Democrats are generally described as uninformed and driven by selfish political interests. This political cant is neither devastating to the book, nor does it detract from the muddy-boots-level view this book provides, but it is there, nonetheless.
The book also holds too closely to an insider’s perspective. This is an advantage when you describe what was happening on the ground, but it is a hindrance when considering the larger questions of the war. The insiders consistently wanted to stay with the mission until something was accomplished, lest the opportunities for a democratic Iraq and the sacrifices of the troops be wasted. This perspective made it seem that when people talked about drawing down or ending the war, the listener was being led to ask, “Don’t those outsiders get it? We’re winning. We can’t stop now.” I personally met with that perspective on the ground with old Iraq hands I worked with. It was certainly a real thing, but it ignores half the story. The book doesn’t cover the cost of the war, the fact that WMDs were a fiction, over stretched forces, Iraqi foot-dragging and dependence, war-weariness at home or, importantly, that Obama was elected to the presidency running hard against the war in an election that was largely seen as a referendum on Bush’s Iraq War policy. It’s as if the people who wanted us out of Iraq were a small, eccentric, and not particularly bright minority when the opposite is true. There were plenty of reasons to leave, but you wouldn't know it from this book.
The reader, Shapiro, did a very good job with a tough piece of material; most of his pronunciations were pretty accurate. This book was full of Arabic words and names and he nailed all but a few, which is a tall order. He even managed US military acronyms (extra points for “MNSTC-I”). Points off for blowing the pronunciation of Huế (Vietnam). Good pacing and a pleasant voice.
Overall, this book is a good addition to the Iraq War canon. It is one perspective to add to the bookshelf, but not the only one.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Gershom D.
- 03-31-16
Actually, a little tedious
I'm really into long, detailed military history, but I'm finding this one hard to stay with. It's not the reader's fault - he's great. I'll have to give this one a try again, but something's not clicking for me here.
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