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Book The Pashtun Boy s Paradise

Download or read book The Pashtun Boy s Paradise written by Stephen Hunt and published by Green Nebula. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The future is beautiful ... just not for everyone! Ash must escape from his broken war-torn country, fleeing towards mythical Europe, or face murder at the hands of a brutish local warlord. The one slight problem is, few ever survive the horrifying packs of ravenous hunting machines roaming across the depopulated border zone! But his perilous odyssey might be worth it. For in this future Europe, nobody goes hungry or poor. Crime has been as good as abolished, and everyone can pursue their dreams, whatever their passions may be. But when you have the perfect utopia, just how far do the clock’s hands need to sweep to strike dystopia? Masterfully imagined and written, this haunting vision of our future questions what it means to be human, and firmly crowns Stephen Hunt at the vanguard of the science fiction genre.

Book Paradise Beneath Her Feet

Download or read book Paradise Beneath Her Feet written by Isobel Coleman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with a new Preface and Afterword by the author “Outstanding . . . [Isobel Coleman] takes us into remote villages and urban bureaucracies to find the brave men and women working to create change in the Middle East.”—Los Angeles Times In this timely and important book, Isobel Coleman shows how Muslim women and men across the Middle East are working within Islam to fight for women’s rights in a growing movement of Islamic feminism. Journeying through Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Coleman introduces the reader to influential Islamic feminist thinkers and successful grassroots activists working to create economic, political, and educational opportunities for women. Their advocacy for women’s rights based on more progressive interpretations of Islam are critical to bridging the conflict between those championing reform and those seeking to oppress women in the name of religious tradition. Socially, culturally, economically, and politically, the future of the region depends on finding ways to accommodate human rights, and in particular women’s rights, with Islamic law. These reformers—and thousands of others—are the people leading the way forward. Featuring new material that addresses how the Arab uprisings and other recent events have affected the social and political landscape of the region, Paradise Beneath Her Feet offers a message of hope: Change is coming to the Middle East—and more often than not, it is being led by women. Praise for Paradise Beneath Her Feet “Clearly written, deeply moving, and wonderfully enlightening.”—Reza Aslan, author of No god but God “[An] engrossing portrait of real Muslim women that reveals how Islamic feminists . . . are working with and within the culture, rather than against it . . . to forge ‘a legitimate Islamic alternative to the current repressive system.’ Coleman doesn’t diminish the enormity of the struggle, but she argues convincingly that it might yet rewrite Islam’s future.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A nuanced view of Islam’s role in public life that is cautiously hopeful.”—The Economist “Eye-opening . . . Deeply religious, profoundly determined and modern in every way, these are twenty-first-century women bent on change. Hear them roar and see a future being born before our eyes.”—Booklist

Book Companions of Paradise

Download or read book Companions of Paradise written by Thalassa Ali and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Singular Hostage and A Beggar at the Gate, Thalassa Ali introduced us to the lush, intriguing world of nineteenth-century British India—and to Mariana Givens, a brave, beautiful Englishwoman. Now, as vengeful Afghan tribesmen close in, Mariana must face the repercussions of her marriage to a Punjabi Muslim, and choose between the people she calls her own—and the life that owns her heart. Mariana Givens aches to return to the rose-scented city of Lahore, home of Hassan Ali Khan, the Muslim stranger she has come to love, his mystical family, and his prescient little son. But her own reckless behavior has sent her into exile at the British cantonment near Kabul, on the eve of the First Afghan War. There, she embarks on a dangerous double life, pretending to be a proper young Victorian lady while secretly traveling Kabul’s violent, fascinating streets to visit the Sufi seer who possesses the answers she needs. But the mystic’s help comes with a price, and her family wants her to marry a British officer. As Afghanistan descends into violence and her hopes of rescue fade, Mariana must make a fateful decision: can she abandon her old life and allow herself to be drawn toward her destiny—whatever it may be?

Book Milk of Paradise

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lucy Inglis
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2019-02-05
  • ISBN : 1643130951
  • Pages : 401 pages

Download or read book Milk of Paradise written by Lucy Inglis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the “Milk of Paradise” for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain—and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport, and refine, and subject to an insatiable global demand. No other substance in the world is as simple to produce or as profitable. It is the basis of a gargantuan industry built upon a shady underworld, but ultimately it is an agricultural product that lives many lives before it reaches the branded blister packet, the intravenous drip, or the scorched and filthy spoon. Many of us will end our lives dependent on it. In Milk of Paradise, acclaimed cultural historian Lucy Inglis takes readers on an epic journey from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America and Afghanistan, from Sanskrit to pop, from poppy tears to smack, from morphine to today’s synthetic opiates. It is a tale of addiction, trade, crime, sex, war, literature, medicine, and, above all, money. And, as this ambitious, wide-ranging, and compelling account vividly shows, the history of opium is our history and it speaks to us of who we are.

Book Another Day in Paradise

    Book Details:
  • Author : Carol Bergman
  • Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
  • Release : 2009-03-30
  • ISBN : 1606085581
  • Pages : 257 pages

Download or read book Another Day in Paradise written by Carol Bergman and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sudan, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Gaza Strip . . . Places that evoke scenes of unimaginable suffering and hardship, the human condition at its worst. But they are also places that highlight humanity at its best--the capacity for generosity, self-sacrifice, and compassion. Among those who live at the intersection of these realities are thousands of international humanitarian workers--dedicated men and women from many countries who leave behind their own comfort and security to face dangers, sorrows, and brutality that most of us cannot imagine. Carol Bergman sough them out and encouraged them to tell their stories-not to add to the chronicles of horror, but as a witness and a challenge. Some of them are heroes; others, ordinary men and women who could not sit idly by while others were suffering.

Book Promise of Paradise

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ghayur Ayub
  • Publisher : Trafford Publishing
  • Release : 2018-06-16
  • ISBN : 1490789480
  • Pages : 164 pages

Download or read book Promise of Paradise written by Ghayur Ayub and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-16 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious schools in Pakistan are called madrasas. There are two typestraditionalist and spiritualist. Traditionalist madrasas promote sectarian education. Suicide attackers are primarily a product of such institutions. Spiritualist madrasas, on the other hand, teach the softer side of Islam turning students into kind and caring humans. This is the story of two twin brothers from a poor family who are sent to two different madrasas.

Book The East  the West  and Sex

Download or read book The East the West and Sex written by Richard Bernstein and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging history, Richard Bernstein explores the connection between sex and power as it has played out between Eastern cultures and the Western explorers, merchants, and conquerors who have visited them. This illuminating book describes the historical and ongoing encounter between these travelers and the morally ambiguous opportunities they found in foreign lands. Bernstein’s narrative teems with real figures, from Marco Polo and his investigation into the harem of Kublai Khan; the nineteenth-century American missionary Isabella Thoburn and her efforts to stamp out the “sinfulness” of the Mughal culture of India; Gustave Flaubert and his dalliances with Egyptian prostitutes; to modern-day sex tourists in Southeast Asia, as well as the women that they both exploit and enrich. Provocative and insightful, The East, The West, and Sex is a lucid look at a pervasive and yet mostly ignored subject.

Book Strange Incursions

Download or read book Strange Incursions written by Stephen Hunt and published by Green Nebula. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are aliens visiting Earth, right now, even as you’re reading this? For a long-time, best-selling science fiction author Stephen Hunt believed - as you might do - that UFOs and the chance extraterrestrials are presently calling on Earth was a load of... (let’s keep this family-friendly), complete old nonsense! What was it that changed his mind? Interestingly, not his encounter with an alien probe in 2001. He wrote that off as a council pollution-monitoring drone - even though the first commercial drone wasn’t used until 2006. No, it was the New York Times’s article revealing that the Pentagon had been running, and denying the existence of, a top-secret alien-hunting program so covert it had to change the word ‘UFO’ to ‘UAP’ just to escape the stigma created by the CIA around the term. This feature came with confirmed videos of the latest U.S. navy fighter jets being made to look like paper planes by anti-gravity effect vehicles. Craft racing at mind-boggling speeds that would turn human pilots into meat-paste. Since then, Stephen has been exploring deep down this rabbit hole. Now, in his very first non-fiction book, he brings you the results of his strange voyage of exploration, seeking the answers to such eye-opening questions as... - Has the U.S. government (a) lost its mind, or (b) are they really trying to back-engineer crashed alien craft wreckage? - What is the connection between UFOs/UAPs and high strangeness (portals, ghosts, Bigfoot)? - Given there are between 100 and 400 billion star systems in our Milky Way Galaxy, where the heck is everyone else? Is humanity truly that unique? The only machine-using species? - What does the U.S. government know that we don’t? - Are UFO witnesses and whistle-blowers influenced by popular science fiction entertainment, or are our media companies dropping approved UFO/alien bread-crumbs? - Is this new wave of official U.S.-sanctioned UFO openness a prelude to something shocking coming our planet’s way? Revelations so improbable, they’ll change humanity forever? Stephen Hunt examines this fascinating and astonishing universe through the eyes of a science fiction author, drawing the parallels between our sci-fictions, and what just might be a bizarre classified reality of actual alien-derived sci-facts.

Book The role of terrorism in twenty first century warfare

Download or read book The role of terrorism in twenty first century warfare written by Susanne Martin and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a critical reflection on the major armed conflicts that occurred during the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria all involved the use of terrorism by one or more groups. Looking to the future, the book asks what this means for violent conflicts yet to come? Using a variety of case studies, the authors provide a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the role played by terrorism as a stand-alone tactic as well as one used to ignite broad-scale conflict. They also pose the question on what occasions does terrorism tend to occur as an armed conflict begins to subside, and when, in other words, is it a trailing indicator?

Book Faith in Faithlessness

    Book Details:
  • Author : Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos
  • Publisher : Black Rose Books Ltd.
  • Release : 2008
  • ISBN : 9781551643120
  • Pages : 444 pages

Download or read book Faith in Faithlessness written by Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos and published by Black Rose Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asks freethinkers to declare their atheism in defiance of the stigmatization of disbelief. With the rise of religious fundamentalism worldwide and a new 'spiritualism' in North America, expressed disbelief in God or gods has become a taboo once again in the Anglo-American world. In the last few years, however, atheism has witnessed a resurgence exemplified by the best-selling works of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Faith in Faithlessness is intended to contribute to the reassertion of the legitimacy of godlessness as a philosophical and moral stance. It is a unique anthology that presents a comprehensive selection of writings, by some of the world's most celebrated thinkers, past and present, who eloquently address the most significant questions concerning religious belief. Included are essays by Benedict de Spinoza, Diderot, Paul-Henry Thiry D'Holbach, David Hume, Thomas Paine, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Stuart Mill, George Elliot, W.E.H. Lecky, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charles Bradlaugh, Anatole France, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert G. Ingersoll, Ludwig Feuerbach, Michael Bakunin, Karl Marx, Emma Goldman, H.L. Mencken, Clarence Darrow, Carl Van Doren, Bertrand Russell, Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus, Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Gore Vidal, Kai Nielsen, Christine Overall, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray, Elizabeth Second Anderson, Tariq Ali, Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut. Also included are other celebrity atheists and a major resource guide. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION FROM THE EARLY CLASSICS 1. Theologico-Political Treatise - Benedict de Spinoza 2. Thoughts on Religion - Denis Diderot 3. The System of Nature - Paul-Henry Thiry, Baron d'Holbach 4. The Natural History of Religion - David Hume 5. The Age of Reason - Thomas Paine 6. A Refutation of Deism - Percy Bysshe Shelley 7. Immortality - John Stuart Mill 8. Evangelical Teaching - George Eliot 9. The Spirit of Rationalism in Europe - W.E.H. Lecky 10. The Christian Church and Women - Elizabeth Cady Stanton 11. Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Charles Bradlaugh 12. Miracle - Anatole France 13. Autobiography - Charles Darwin 14. The Antichrist - Friedrich Nietzsche 15. God and the Constitution - Robert G. Ingersoll 16. The Essence of Religion in General - Ludwig Feuerbach 17. God and the State - Michael Bakunin 18. Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right - Karl Marx FROM THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY CLASSICS 19. The Philosophy of Atheism - Emma Goldman 20. On the Scopes Trial - H.L. Mencken 21. The Lord's Day Alliance - Clarence Darrow 22. Why I Am an Unbeliever - Clarence Darrow 23. Is There a God? - Bertrand Russell 24. The Claims of Theology - A.J. Ayer 25. The UNbelievers and the Christians - Albert Camus 26. Science and Religion - Albert Einstein FROM THE LATER 20th CENTURY and 21st CENTURY 27. Monotheism and Its Discontents - Gore Vidal 28. How Is Atheism to Be Characterized? - Kai Nielsen 29. Atheism - Christine Overall 30. The Atheist Manifesto - Sam Harris 31. Why There Almost Certainly Is No God - Richard Dawkins 32. Religion as an Original Sin - Christopher Hitchens 33. In the Service of the Death Fixation - Michel Onfray 34. Thank Goodness! - Daniel C. Dennett 35. For the Love of Reason - Louise M. Anthony 36. If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted? - Elizabeth Second Anderson 37. An Atheist Childhood - Tariq Ali A Rapper's Song - Greydon Square 38. Humanism and the Territory of Novelists - Salman Rushdie 39. Why My Dog Is Not a Humanist - Kurt Vonnegut EPILOGUE: A New Enlightenment: The Second Wave - Dimitrios Roussopoulos NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS RESOURCE GUIDE from the Website of Richard Dawkins CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS Celebrity quotes throughout, including from George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aldous HUxley, Tennessee Williams, Charles Bukowski, Jean-Paul Sartre, Noam Chomsky, Sigmund Freud, Ingmar Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, John Malkovich, Robert Altman, Jodie Foster, Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, Howard Stern, Isaac Asimov, Woody Allen, Richard Leakey, James Watson, Jean Roddenberry, Gloria Steinem. DIMITRIOS ROUSSOPOULOS is author and/or editor of some eighteen books.

Book Those Houses on the Ridge

Download or read book Those Houses on the Ridge written by Javaid Syed and published by Booktango. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of September 11, Those Houses on the Ridge explores the other side, one that is not visible to many; it is written in the name of the children who die as suicide bombers. When Margaret, an anthropologist from London, embarks on an excursion to study the inhabitants of a remote area in Pakistan, little does she know about the involvement she will have in the lives of an innocent family in Those Houses on the Ridge. What follows is a tale of suicide bombers and human trafficking that can even seep into that hidden part of the world. The story follows the trails of Jaffer, an innocent boy lured into religious fanaticism, and his journey to break away from it as he enters adulthood. He treads many shores and wanders hopelessly to pick up the missing pieces of his childhood, and to break away alive. Does his livelihood and freedom mean letting go of his only blood relative? Or will he choose to return to his only true love, who might not even be there!

Book Home  Land  Security

Download or read book Home Land Security written by Carla Power and published by One World. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A “provocative and deeply reported look into the emerging field of deradicalization” (Esquire), told through the stories of former militants and the people working to bring them back into society What are the roots of radicalism? Journalist Carla Power came to this question well before the January 6, 2021, attack in Washington, D.C., turned our country’s attention to the problem of domestic radicalization. Her entry point was a different wave of radical panic—the way populists and pundits encouraged us to see the young people who joined ISIS or other terrorist organizations as simple monsters. Power wanted to chip away at the stereotypes by focusing not on what these young people had done but why: What drew them into militancy? What visions of the world—of home, of land, of security for themselves and the people they loved—shifted their thinking toward radical beliefs? And what visions of the world might bring them back to society? Power begins her journey by talking to the mothers of young men who’d joined ISIS in the UK and Canada; from there, she travels around the world in search of societies that are finding new and innovative ways to rehabilitate former extremists. We meet an American judge who has staked his career on finding new ways to handle terrorist suspects, a Pakistani woman running a game-changing school for former child soldiers, a radicalized Somali American who learns through literature to see beyond his Manichean beliefs, and a former neo-Nazi who now helps disarm white supremacists. Along the way Power gleans lessons that get her closer to answering the true question at the heart of her pursuit: Can we find a way to live together? An eye-opening, page-turning investigation, Home, Land, Security speaks to the rise of division and radicalization in all forms, both at home and abroad. In this richly reported and deeply human account, Carla Power offers new ways to overcome the rising tides of extremism, one human at a time.

Book Islam  Religion of Peace

    Book Details:
  • Author : Mario Alexis Portella
  • Publisher : WestBow Press
  • Release : 2018-09-25
  • ISBN : 1973635542
  • Pages : 444 pages

Download or read book Islam Religion of Peace written by Mario Alexis Portella and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight hundred years ago, St. Francis of Assisi embarked on a mission to the port city of Damietta, Egypt, to try and convert Sultan al-Kamil to Christianity. While this did not come to fruition, both the sultan and the saint were able to have a peaceful dialogue and establish a mutual respect that is absent from the present-day polemics of Islam. While many today hold that those who seek to create a universal caliphate through acts of terror in the name of Islam falsely represent their religion, they ignore the original Islamic texts that inspire these perpetrators. The Islamization of our society, however, does not just come from avowed terrorists but from various Islamic scholars and activists seeking to impose sharia law. As a result of the West disavowing its Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots, government officials have catered to such injustices since they consider the petrodollar more valuable than the victims of violence. Consequently, they have capitulated our rights of free speech and religion to the point of classifying anyone who questions Islamists’ intentions as an Islamophobe. Islam: Religion of Peace? places Islam in its historical and sociopolitical contexts in order to better understand what has bred the Islamic threat facing today’s society, as well as how many of our political and church leaders have failed to address the problem, thereby creating more instability between both Muslims and non-Muslims. Author Mario Alexis Portella also proposes solutions whereby both peoples may enter into a meaningful discourse and establish harmony.

Book Captive

Download or read book Captive written by Jere Van Dyk and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American reporter's chilling account of being kidnapped and imprisoned by the Taliban, in the no-man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan Jere Van Dyk was on the wrong side of the border. He and three Afghan guides had crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where no Westerner had ventured for years, hoping to reach the home of a local chieftain by nightfall. But then a dozen armed men in black turbans appeared over the crest of a hill. Captive is Van Dyk's searing account of his forty-five days in a Taliban prison, and it is gripping and terrifying in the tradition of the best prison literature. The main action takes place in a single room, cut off from the outside world, where Van Dyk feels he can trust nobody—not his jailers, not his guides (who he fears may have betrayed him), and certainly not the charismatic Taliban leader whose fleeting appearances carry the hope of redemption as well as the prospect of immediate, violent death. Van Dyk went to the tribal areas to investigate the challenges facing America there. His story is of a deeper, more personal challenge, an unforgettable tale of human endurance.

Book Capital

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rana Dasgupta
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2014-05-15
  • ISBN : 069816380X
  • Pages : 444 pages

Download or read book Capital written by Rana Dasgupta and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Capital, Commonwealth Prize–winning author Rana Dasgupta examines one of the great trends of our time: the expansion of the global elite. Capital is an intimate portrait of the city of Delhi which bears witness to the extraordinary transmogrification of India’s capital. But it also offers a glimpse of what capitalism will become in the coming, post-Western world. The story of Delhi is a parable for where we are all headed. The boom following the opening up of India’s economy plunged Delhi into a tumult of destruction and creation: slums and markets were ripped down, and shopping malls and apartment blocks erupted from the ruins. Many fortunes were made, and in the glassy stores nestled among the new highways, customers paid for global luxury with bags of cash. But the transformation was stern, abrupt and fantastically unequal, and it gave rise to strange and bewildering feelings. The city brimmed with ambition and rage. Violent crimes stole the headlines. In the style of V. S. Naipaul’s now classic personal journeys, Dasgupta shows us this city through the eyes of its people. With the lyricism and empathy of a novelist, Dasgupta takes us through a series of encounters – with billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts – which plunge us into Delhi’s intoxicating, and sometimes terrifying, story of capitalist transformation. Together these people comprise a generation on the cusp, like that of Gilded Age New York: who they are, and what they want, says a tremendous amount about what the world will look like in the rest of the twenty-first century. Interweaving over a century of history with his personal journey, Dasgupta presents us with the first literary portrait of one of the twenty-first century’s fastest-growing megalopolises – a dark and uncanny portrait that gives us insights, too, as to the nature of our own – everyone’s – shared, global future.

Book Imagining Afghanistan

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nivi Manchanda
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2020-07-09
  • ISBN : 1108491235
  • Pages : 265 pages

Download or read book Imagining Afghanistan written by Nivi Manchanda and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative exploration of how colonial interventions in Afghanistan have been made possible through representations of the country as 'backward'.

Book Directorate S

Download or read book Directorate S written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan. Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.