"This excellent book is a painfully honest account of successive unwinnable wars. It is the text book Mr. Obama and others will need if Afghanistan is ever to be left to find its own peace and prosperity." --Jon Snow, Channel 4 News (UK)

Jonathan Steele, an award-winning journalist and commentator, has covered the country since his first visit there as a reporter in 1981. He tracked the Soviet occupation and the communist regime of Najibullah, which held the Western-backed resistance at bay for three years after the Soviets left. He covered the arrival of the Taliban to power in Kabul in...