The Assassins' Gate
Page 58
—Robert Ruby, The Baltimore Sun
“This is the first truly great book of the Iraq war.”
—The Washington Monthly
“George Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, blends on-the-scene reporting and thoughtful analysis in a sobering account of the unfinished war in Iraq and its impact on Americans and Iraqis. He cheers the demise of Saddam, while questioning a war with deep roots in history, but far from inevitable.”
—Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
“The Iraq debate has long needed someone who is both tough-minded enough, and sufficiently sensitive, to register all its complexities. In George Packer’s work, this need is answered … Packer has a genuine instinct for what the Iraqi people have endured and are enduring, and writes with admirable empathy. His own opinions are neither suppressed nor intrusive: he clearly welcomes the end of Saddam while having serious doubts about the wisdom of the war, and he continually tests himself against experience.”
—Christopher Hitchens, Publishers Weekly
“In the midst of a war that has raised thousands of questions, George Packer has given us a brilliant, moving, and essential book with answers. Packer, who was an up-close witness to the prewar debates and the wartime carnage, cuts past the simplistic recriminations and takes us on an unforgettable journey that begins on a trail of good intentions and winds up on a devastating trail of tears. If you want to understand how Iraq became a quagmire, and who the human beings are who suffer its consequences, you must read this book.”
—Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide
George Packer
THE ASSASSINS’ GATE
George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of several books, including Blood of the Liberals (FSG, 2000), winner of the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Award. He is also the editor of the anthology The Fight Is for Democracy. His reporting from Iraq won an Overseas Press Club award. He lives in Brooklyn.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2005 by George Packer
Afterword copyright © 2006 by George Packer
Reading Group Guide copyright © 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
All rights reserved
Published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First paperback edition, 2006
Portions of this work originally appeared, in different form, in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine.
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-374-53055-6
Paperback ISBN-10: 0-374-53055-6
www.fsgbooks.com
eISBN 9780374705329
First eBook edition: March 2014