Steve Coll

The first account of the new Taliban—showing who they are, what they want, and how they differ from their predecessors A Newsweek Staffers’ Favorite Book of 2023 Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have effective control of Afghanistan—a scenario few Western commentators anticipated. But after a twenty-year-long bitter war against the Republic of Afghanistan, reestablishing control is a complex procedure. What is the Taliban’s strategy now that they’ve returned to power? In this groundbreaking new account, Hassan Abbas examines the resurgent Taliban as ruptures between moderates and the hardliners in power continue to widen. The group is now facing debilitating threats—from humanitarian crises to the Islamic State in Khorasan—but also engaging on the world stage, particularly with China and central Asian states. Making considered use of sources and contacts in the region, and offering profiles of major Taliban leaders, Return of the Taliban is the essential account of the movement as it develops and consolidates its grasp on Afghanistan.

A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life. "Why did you leave Sierra Leone?" "Because there is a war." "You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?" "Yes, all the time." "Cool." I smile a little. "You should tell us about it sometime." "Yes, sometime." This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Named a Best Book of the Year by Foreign Affairs, Financial Times,and Kirkus Reviews The #1 Sunday Times bestseller, published in the UK as Politics on the Edge. “One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality.” —Matthew Parris,The TLS “[Rory Stewart] walked across Asia, served in British Parliament, and ran against Boris Johnson. Now he gives us his view of what’s wrong with politics, and how we can make it right.” —Adam Grant, “The 12 New Fall Books to Enrich Your Thinking” From a great writer—legendary for his expeditions into some of the world’s most forbidding places—a wise, honest, and sometimes absurdist memoir of a most remarkable journey through British politics at the breaking point Rory Stewart was an unlikely politician. He was best known for his two-year walk across Asia—in which he crossed Afghanistan, essentially solo, in the months after 9/11—and for his service, as a diplomat in Iraq, and Afghanistan. But in 2009, he abandoned his chair at Harvard University to stand for a seat in Parliament, representing the communities and farms of the Lake District and the Scottish border—one of the most isolated and beautiful districts in England. He ran as a Conservative, though he had no prior connection to the politics and there was much about the party that he disagreed with. How Not to Be a Politician is a candid and penetrating examination of life on the ground as a politician in an age of shallow populism, when every hard problem has a solution that’s simple, appealing, and wrong. While undauntedly optimistic about what a public servant can accomplish in the lives of his constituents, the book is also a pitiless insider’s exposé of the game of politics at the highest level, often shocking in its displays of rampant cynicism, ignorance, glibness, and sheer incompetence. Stewart witnesses Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and its descent into political civil war, compounded by the bad faith of his party’s leaders—David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss. Finally, after nine years of service and six ministerial roles, and shocked by his party’s lurch to the populist right, Stewart ran for prime minister. Stewart’s campaign took him into the lead in the opinion polls, head-to-head against Boris Johnson. How Not to Be a Politician is his effort to make sense of it all, including what has happened to politics in Britain and the world and how we can fix it. The view into democracy’s dark heart is troubling, but at every turn Stewart also finds allies and ways to make a difference. A bracing, invigorating mix of irony and love infuses How Not to Be a Politician. This is one of the most revealing memoirs written by a politician in living memory.