Quick Reads: “Little America” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

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Autocratic forces are ascendant.

Truth-telling independent media is one remaining bulwark against an autocrat’s unrestrained exercise of power. At a time when billionaire owners of corporate media are making accommodations to political leaders, our nonprofit newsroom cannot be bought, bent, or broken. Depend on it, and please stand with us.

Autocratic forces are ascendant in America. But truth-telling independent media is one remaining bulwark against the unrestrained exercise of power. At a time when billionaire owners of corporate media are making accommodations to political leaders, our nonprofit newsroom cannot be bought or broken. Please stand with us.

Courtesy of Knopf Publishers Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

ALFRED A. KNOPF

Before turning his attention to our other military misadventure, Washington Post associate editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a damning Iraq War exposé that became the basis for Green Zone, that Matt Damon flick you probably missed. Here he returns with a highly readable chronicle of Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan. Little America offers a window into the thinking of our key decision makers, along with the requisite political and cultural context; his apt portrayal of the Afghan perspective and on-the-ground tensions—as when Richard Holbrooke, the late US envoy, backed a Karzai rival for president—makes the book a must for policy shapers and voters alike.