
The Mercenary
A Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War
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Narrated by:
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Ray Corasani
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By:
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Jeffrey E. Stern
About this listen
A thrilling and emotional story about the bonds forged in war and good intentions gone wrong.
In the early days of the Afghanistan war, Jeff Stern was scouring the streets of Kabul for a big story. He was accompanied by a driver, Aimal, who had ambitions of his own: to get rich off the sudden infusion of foreign attention and cash.
In this gripping adventure story, Stern writes of how he and Aimal navigated an environment full of guns and danger and opportunity, and how they forged a deep bond.
Then Stern got a call that changed everything. He discovered that Aimal had become an arms dealer, and was ultimately forced to flee the country to protect his family from his increasingly dangerous business partners.
Tragic, powerful, and layered, The Mercenary is more than a wartime drama. It is a Rashomon-like story about how politics and violence warp our humanity, and keep the most important truths hidden.
©2023 Jeffrey E. Stern (P)2023 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
On July 15, 1997, Gianni Versace was shot and killed on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. But months before Versace’s murder, award-winning journalist Maureen Orth was already investigating a major story on Cunanan for Vanity Fair. Culled from interviews with more than four hundred people and insights gleaned from thousands of pages of police reports, Vulgar Favors tells the complete story of Andrew Cunanan, his unwitting victims, and the moneyed world in which they lived . . . and died.
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ONE OF THE BEST TRUE CRIME BOOKS IN MY LIBRARY!
- By Steve on 10-29-17
By: Maureen Orth
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The Buried
- An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Hessler
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.
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A Fascinating, Funny, and Moving Account of Egypt
- By Jefferson on 07-23-19
By: Peter Hessler
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The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
- By: David I. Kertzer
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene - one that would haunt this family forever - David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping.
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Too much detail
- By L. WILLIAM on 03-03-24
By: David I. Kertzer
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Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
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fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
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Master of the Game
- Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy
- By: Martin Indyk
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 25 hrs
- Unabridged
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More than 20 years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk - a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013 - has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand.
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Sad in its lack of creativity
- By Uri Pilichowski on 11-16-21
By: Martin Indyk
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Last Hope Island
- Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War
- By: Lynne Olson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times best-selling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days.
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Not What I Expected--More What I Needed to Know
- By DanD on 06-25-17
By: Lynne Olson
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Brave Men
- By: Ernie Pyle, David Chrisinger
- Narrated by: Michael Brainard
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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When America entered World War II, Ernie Pyle followed the soldiers into the trenches. Long before television and the internet beamed combat footage directly to us, his dispatches from the front lines augmented the coverage of the war’s politics, strategies, and macro-level mobilizations to give the American public what he called his “worm’s-eye view” of the day-to-day life of the war.
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The story in the way the narrator spoke
- By Dave Leonard on 04-24-24
By: Ernie Pyle, and others
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Magdalena
- River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia
- By: Wade Davis
- Narrated by: Wade Davis, Xandra Uribe
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Travelers often become enchanted with the first country that captures their hearts and gives them license to be free. For Wade Davis, it was Colombia. Now in a masterly new book, Davis tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of a land that is home to the greatest ecological and geographical diversity on the planet.
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A must read for colombians
- By Rolando Ruiz on 01-12-21
By: Wade Davis
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Believer
- My Forty Years in Politics
- By: David Axelrod
- Narrated by: David Axelrod
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The man behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade, David Axelrod has devoted a lifetime to questioning political certainties and daring to bring fresh thinking into the political landscape. Whether as a child hearing John F. Kennedy stump in New York or as a strategist guiding the first African American to the White House, Axelrod shows in Believer how his own life stands at the center of the tumultuous American century.
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Love letter to Obama
- By DaWoolf on 03-15-15
By: David Axelrod
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The Bounty
- The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
- By: Caroline Alexander
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty, the true story of this enthralling adventure has become obscured by the legend. Combining vivid characterization and deft storytelling, Caroline Alexander shatters the centuries-old myths surrounding this story.
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The real story
- By Quilter on 07-11-23
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The West
- A New History in Fourteen Lives
- By: Naoíse Mac Sweeney
- Narrated by: Shaheen Khan
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals.
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Extraordinary!!
- By Carlos Forray on 10-03-23
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Maus Now
- Selected Writing
- By: Hillary Chute - editor
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman is one of our most influential contemporary artists; it’s hard to overstate his effect on postwar American culture. Maus shaped the fields of literature, history, and art, and has enlivened our collective sense of possibilities for expression. A timeless work in more ways than one, Maus has also often been at the center of debates, as its recent ban by the McMinn County, Tennessee, school board from the district’s English language-arts curriculum demonstrates.
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Different than I thought
- By Ilovedogsledding on 12-12-22
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Dark Sun
- The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 28 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.
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TEDIOUS - slow, dry, monotone delivery
- By Subway on 05-01-25
By: Richard Rhodes
Ray Corasani does justice to Stern’s incisive prose with pitch-perfect narration.
Stern is such a talented storyteller that this book moves along relentlessly. He is so honest and self-critical that I sometimes wanted to ask him not to be so hard on himself, but his prose are always clear and accurate and, at times, profoundly moving while never sentimental.
This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I did not know what to expect. What I can tell you is that you are unlikely to regret listening to or reading it. Some moments may make you uncomfortable, they may make you confront difficult questions about war, friendship, and justice, and they may even make you wonder whether you are doing enough to help people in need, but it will never bore you.
Stern divided the book into three main sections. The first section is written from his point of view, his path to becoming a war correspondent in Afghanistan. While his path is almost an accident, he is so consistently lucky that it must be more natural skill than luck. Early on, he meets a driver in this section called Alex, who becomes the key to breaking into a real war reporting job without experience. The relationship between the author and Alex is the critical storyline that ties this book together.
Section two runs through the same timeline as section one but from Aimal’s (Alex’s Afgan name) point of view. I feel Stern added more depth of emotion and sympathy to Aimal’s story than his own, even though Aimal gets caught up with some frightening people and runs a dangerous business.
And finally, section three pulls all these threads together as an ad hoc group of people work to save Afghan women and teachers as the West withdrawals and the Taliban takes control.
Throughout the book, the story unfolds artfully, part journalism, part war drama, part relationships story about the bonds created under stress when everything is at risk and when someone dependable can be the difference between life and death.
Stern’s prose drives the book forward, his honesty makes you believe, and the relationship between Aimal/Alex and him runs so deep and moving that I found myself tearing up in the end, even as the narrative is so clear-eyed.
You can’t help but marvel at the work done by groups like 30 Birds https://www.30birdsfoundation.org, who Stern worked nonstop with to get Afghans out in the end and settle in Canada, the real hero’s who I could not resist donating to, you might consider it too.
If you want a great read that puts you in the center of a dynamic story, is well-written, and leaves you more knowledgeable about the dynamics of war, this is your next book. It will give you faith that just a few people can make a big difference in the toughest of circumstances.
Brilliant, honest, engrossing and raw
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Important and thrilling read
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I truly hope there's a follow-up to this book somewhere later in our timeline. Truly a marvelous piece of writing and an exceptional encore to Stern's first book The Last Thousand
Holy enthralling book, Batman!
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