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Inside the Enduring Conflict between America and al-Qaeda
by Peter Bergen
Ten years have passed since the shocking attacks on the World Trade Center, and after seven years of conflict, the last U.S. combat troops left Iraq - only to move into Afghanistan, where the ten-year-old fight continues: the war on terror rages with no clear end in sight. In The Longest War Peter Bergen offers a comprehensive history of this war and its evolution, from the strategies devised in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to the fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond. Unlike any other book on this subject, here Bergen tells the story of this shifting war’s failures and successes from the perspectives of both the United States and al-Qaeda and its allies. He goes into the homes of al-Qaeda members, rooting into the source of their devotion to terrorist causes, and spends time in the offices of the major players shaping the U.S. strategic efforts in the region. At a time when many are frustrated or fatigued with what has become an enduring multigenerational conflict, this book will provide an illuminating narrative that not only traces the arc of the fight but projects its likely future.
"Starred Review. One of the deepest and most disturbing investigations of one of the defining issues of our era." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Drawing on vast firsthand knowledge of the region and mining a huge stock of primary and secondary material, including his own interviews with combatants, the book's depth of detail and breadth of insight make it one of the more useful analyses of the ongoing conflict." - Publishers Weekly
"Although this is ground covered by a number of other recent books, Bergen’s account is more thickly researched and more engagingly told than most, and is not to be overlooked." - Booklist
This information about The Longest War was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Peter l. Bergen is CNN's terrorism analyst and a print and television reporter who has done extensive reporting about al Qaeda around the world for more than a decade. Bergen has written about terrorism for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph. An adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a Fellow at the New America Foundation, Bergen is based in Washington, D.C.
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