{"product_id":"9780525561040","title":"To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of\u003ci\u003e BookPage\u003c\/i\u003e's Best Books of 2020\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eTo Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eis essential reading—now, especially now . . . Draper’s account [is] one\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003efor the ages . . . A must-read for all who care about presidential power.\u003cb\u003e” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller \u003ci\u003eDead Certain\u003c\/i\u003e comes the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy—the decision to invade Iraq.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. For too many people, the damage is still too palpable, and still unfolding. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few of them are not haunted by it, in one way or another. Perhaps it's that combination, the passage of the years and the still unresolved trauma, that explains why so many protagonists opened up so fully for the first time to Robert Draper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDraper's prodigious reporting has yielded scores of consequential new revelations, from the important to the merely absurd. As a whole, the book paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9\/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. Draper's fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara Tuchman's \u003ci\u003eThe Guns of August\u003c\/i\u003e and Marc Bloch's \u003ci\u003eStrange Defeat\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTo Start A War\u003c\/i\u003e will stand as the definitive account of a collective process that arrived at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth—evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.","brand":"Penguin Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42369685782589,"sku":"9780525561040","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0603\/0838\/9949\/files\/9780525561040_p0.jpg?v=1771567402","url":"https:\/\/www.tatteredcover.com\/products\/9780525561040","provider":"Tattered Cover","version":"1.0","type":"link"}