The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001–2016

Directorate S

Winner of the the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction 
 
'Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age ... it is a classic' Evening Standard 
'In the finest traditions of American investigative journalism' The Times 
'Spectacular ... makes Bourne movies pale in comparison' Financial Times 
 
From the Pulitzer Prize winning of the acclaimed Ghost Wars, this is the full story of America's grim involvement in the affairs of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2016. In the wake of the terrible shock of 9/11, the C.I.A. scrambled to work out how to destroy Bin Laden and his associates. The C.I.A. had long familiarity with Afghanistan and had worked closely with the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union there. A tangle of assumptions, old contacts, favours and animosities were now reactivated. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Laden's successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATO's mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire which lasted many years. 
 
At the heart of the problem lay 'Directorate S', a highly secretive arm of the Pakistan state which had its own views on the Taliban and Afghanistan's place in a wider competition for influence between Pakistan, India and China, and which assumed that the U.S.A. and its allies would soon be leaving. 
 
Steve Coll's remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong and of many lives lost.

Every assertion is carefully sourced and checked. This book is in the finest traditions of American investigative journalism. Coll is the thinking man's Michael Wolff.

A masterful and entertaining account ... the story is delivered with a literary prowess that has been absent in previous western accounts of America's longest running war

Spectacular ... Directorate S has a cast of characters that makes Bourne movies pale in comparison

Impressively detailed, stylishly crafted and authoritative... as gloomy as it is compelling

Steve Coll is dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. His major books include Private Empire, The Bin Ladens and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars. He is a staff writer on The New Yorker.

ExxonMobil and American Power

Private Empire

From twice-Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Steve Coll comes Private Empire, winner of the FT/GOLDMAN SACHS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2012 
 
The oil giant ExxonMobil makes more money annually than the GDP of most countries; has greater sway than US embassies abroad; and spends more on lobbying than any other corporation. Yet to outsiders it is a mystery. In Private Empire, award-winning reporter Steve Coll tells the truth about the world's most powerful and shadowy company. 
 
From the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, via Moscow, the swamps of the Niger Delta and the halls of Congress, he reveals a story of dictators, oligarchs, civil war, blackmail, secrecy and ruthlessness. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and newly declassified documents, this is a chilling portrait of unchecked power. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Magisterial ... a revealing history of our time' New York Review of Books 
 
'Meticulous, multi-angled and valuable ... Coll's prose sweeps the earth like an Imax camera' Dwight Garner, The New York Times 
 
'Jaw-dropping reading' Kirkus Reviews 
 
'The definitive work on its subject ... at every stop there are vivid anecdotes, sharp insights and telling details' Ed Crooks, Financial Times 
 
About the author: 
 
Steve Coll is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Bin Ladens. He is president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He won a Pulitzer prize for explanatory journalism while working at the Washingon Post. He is the author of six other books, including the bestseller Ghost Wars, which won him a second Pulitzer prize. He lives in Washington and New York.

Magisterial ... a revealing history of our time

Meticulously researched and elegantly written, it is likely to be the definitive work on its subject for many years to come. Steve Coll ... is honest about Exxon's strengths as well as its flaws, and presents both sides of the arguments with scrupulous even-handedness ... At every stop there are vivid anecdotes, sharp insights and telling details

Masterful ... Coll's in-depth reporting, buttressed by his anecdotal prose, make Private Empire a must-read ... [His] portrait of ExxonMobil is both riveting and appalling... Yet Private Empire is not so much an indictment as a fascinating look into American business and politics

Meticulous, multi-angled and valuable ... Coll's prose sweeps the earth like an Imax camera

A thorough, sobering study of the pernicious consolidation of Big Oil ... jaw-dropping reading

Steve Coll is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Bin Ladens. He is president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He won a Pulitzer prize for explanatory journalism while working at the Washingon Post. He is the author of six other books, including the bestseller Ghost Wars, which won him a second Pulitzer prize. He lives in Washington and New York.

Oil, Money, Terrorism and the Secret Saudi World

The Bin Ladens

Steve Coll is most recently the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Ghost Wars. He also won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. He covered Afghanistan as the Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992 and was the Post's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is now a staff writer for the New Yorker. He is the author of five books, including On the Grand Trunk Road and The Taking of Getty Oil. He lives with his wife and three children in Maryland.

The Bin Ladens are shrouded in secrecy, living in one of the most closed, unaccountable countries on earth. Little has been known about the world that created Osama - until now. 
 
In this gripping account prizewinning journalist Steve Coll has interviewed those closest to the family who rose from Yemeni peasants to jetsetting millionaires in two generations. In doing so, he reveals a Saudi Arabia torn between religious purity and the temptations of the West, telling a story of oil, money, power, patronage and dangerous cultural extremes.

The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden

Ghost Wars

A New York Times Top Ten bestseller.

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize 
 
The explosive, New York Times bestselling first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan 
 
Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences. 
 
'Riveting ... the finest historical narrative so far on the origins of al Qaeda in the post-Soviet rubble of Afghanistan ... provides fresh details and helps explain the motivations behind many crucial decisions' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'A remarkable book ... the CIA itself would be hard put to beat his grasp of global events' New York Review of Books

Steve Coll, winner of a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism, has been managing editor of the Washington Post since 1998 and covered Afghanistan as the Post's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992. Coll is the author of four books, including On the Grand Trunk Road and The Taking of Getty Oil.

The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. 
 
Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

Steve Coll

PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES: A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he describes are darkly hilarious ... a must-read for anyone who cares about this never-ending war.

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

A spectacular account ... a cast of characters that makes Bourne movies pale in comparison.

Masterful and entertaining ... might well become the definitive account of the CIA and America's secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003

The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous, decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. 
 
Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme, Steve Coll traces Saddam's motives through understanding his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader - a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of many more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances in his paranoia, resentments and inconsistencies - even when the stakes were incredibly high. 
 
Using unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam's own transcripts and audio files, The Achilles Trap is a remarkable picture of a dictator who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, it is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy and vanity - on both sides - led to avoidable errors of statecraft: ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change our political landscape.

The Achilles Trap

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Steve Coll

Praise for The Achilles Trap

**PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES:** A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

**PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES:** A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

**PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES:** A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

Books by Steve Coll

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

Praise for The Achilles Trap

PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES: A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES: A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES: A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age.

Engrossing ... Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence.

Books by Steve Coll

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

**PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES:** A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

**PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES:** A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...

**PRAISE FOR DIRECTORATES:** A cracking read ... The errors Coll catalogues are familiar. What Coll does, though, is present all this in far more detail than anyone before him. Some of the episodes he desc ...