
Twenty Years
Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation
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Narrated by:
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Fajer Al-Kaisi
About this listen
An intimate history of the Afghan war―and the young Afghans whose dreams it enabled and dashed.
No country was more deeply affected by 9/11 than Afghanistan: an entire generation grew up amid the upheaval that began that day. Young Afghans knew the promise of freedom, democracy, and safety, fought with each other over its meaning―and then witnessed its collapse. In Twenty Years, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen draws on more than a decade of reporting from the country to tell Afghanistan’s story from a new angle. Through the eyes of newly empowered women, skilled entrepreneurs, driven insurgents, and abandoned Western allies, we see the United States and its partners bring new freedoms and wealth, only to preside over the corruption, war-lordism, and social division that led to the Taliban’s return to power.
Rasmussen relates this history via two main characters: Zahra, who returns from abroad with high hopes for her liberated county, where she must fight to escape a brutal marriage and rebuild her life; and Omari, who joins the Taliban to protect the honor of his village and country and winds up wrestling with doubt and the trauma of war after achieving victory. We also meet Parasto, who risks her life running clandestine girls’ schools under the new Taliban regime, and Fahim, a rags-to-riches tycoon who is forced to flee. With intimate access to these and other characters, Rasmussen offers deep insight into a country betrayed by the West and Taliban alike.
©2024 Sune Engel Rasmussen (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Critic reviews
“An unflinching, knowledgeable examination of betrayed hopes, broken fates, and damaged lives—the record of America’s failed experiment to remake Afghanistan. Sune Engel Rasmussen has crisscrossed the country and delivered a deeply empathetic book that illuminates the human toll exacted on the Afghans—those who had believed in American promises of a better future, and those who had fought America in the battlefield.”—Yaroslav Trofimov, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Our Enemies Will Vanish
"Sune Engel Rasmussen has crafted a rich narrative showing how America's longest war affected Afghans, from the women who bought into the idea that they could help chart their country's future to the men who were skeptical of the future that the West would actually deliver. He's managed to weave together all the faces of Afghanistan, and all the complexities, contradictions, surprises and tragedies lived over decades of conflict. His book manages to be both a lesson in empathy and a vital snapshot of history."—Kim Barker, author of The Taliban Shuffle
"Sune Engel Rasmussen's coverage of Afghanistan has long been superlative. Now comes his excellent book, which is deeply reported, well-written, and moving, telling the story of America's abandonment of the Afghan people. It's a somber story that he tells very well."—Peter Bergen, author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden
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Story
Riotous and galvanizing, Tits Up excavates the diverse truths of mammary glands from the strip club to the operating room, from the nation’s oldest human milk bank to the fit rooms of bra designers. Thornton draws insights from plastic surgeons, lactation consultants, body-positive witches, lingerie models, and “free the nipple” activists to explore the status of breasts as emblems of femininity. She examines how women’s chests have become a billion-dollar business, as well as a stage for debates about race, class, gender, and desire.
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diverse perspectives
- By Will on 05-18-24
By: Sarah Thornton
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The Price They Paid
- Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War
- By: Jeff Forret
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1831, the American ship Comet, carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau set the rescued captives free. In a work of profoundly relevant research and storytelling, historian and Frederick Douglass Prize–winner Jeff Forret uncovers how the Comet incident—as well as similar episodes that unfolded over the next decade—resulted in the British Crown making reparations payments to a U.S. government that strenuously represented slaveholder interests.
By: Jeff Forret
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Written in Water
- The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art
- By: Rochelle Gurstein
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Is there such a thing as a timeless classic? More than a decade ago, Rochelle Gurstein set out to explore and establish a solid foundation for the classic in the history of taste. To her surprise, that history instead revealed repeated episodes of soaring and falling reputations, rediscoveries of long-forgotten artists, and radical shifts in the canon, all of which went so completely against common knowledge that it was hard to believe it was true.
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The Book-Makers
- A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives
- By: Adam Smyth
- Narrated by: Adam Smyth
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.
By: Adam Smyth
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Venice
- The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City
- By: Dennis Romano
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 30 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.” During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival.
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As a resident great general summary of the history of the city
- By marco on 01-13-25
By: Dennis Romano
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Spycraft
- Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration
- By: Pete Langman, Nadine Akkerman
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this engaging, accessible account, Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman explore the methods spies actually used in the period, including disguises, invisible inks, and even poisons. Drawing on a vast array of archival sources, they show how understanding the tricks and tools of espionage allows us to reimagine well-known stories such as the Babington and Gunpowder plots.
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Needs accompanying PDF
- By Amazon Customer on 09-26-24
By: Pete Langman, and others
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Impossible Monsters
- Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion
- By: Michael Taylor
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind's place in the world.
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Repetitive and not that interesting
- By Michael on 09-09-24
By: Michael Taylor