Little America

Praise

Praise for Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Little America:

“Beautifully written. . . . A brilliant and courageous work of reportage. . . . Rajiv Chandrasekaran has done it again. Like Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Little America is a . . . deeply reported account of how a divided United States government and its dysfunctional bureaucracy have foiled American efforts abroad.”
—The New York Times Book Review
  
“Fascinating and fresh . . . Chandrasekaran is a superb reporter and graceful writer whose individual vignettes, focused on military and civilian misfires, are on-target and often mortifying.”
—The Wall Street Journal 
 
“Brilliant . . . Only a journalist with Chandrasekaran’s experience and skill could tell this extraordinarily complicated story with such clarity.”
—Newsday
 
“A scalding and in-depth critique of U.S. policy and performance in Afghanistan.”
—The Star-Ledger

“Chandrasekaran draws vivid sketches of how Karzai and his family and their allies operate as a gang of looters, frustrating every attempt to create an honest government that could confront their Taliban enemy . . . The reader gets a keen sense of the chaos that reigns among the Americans and their allies.”
—The Washington Post

“A thoughtful guide to President Obama’s ‘good war’ [and] a devastating indictment of a dysfunctional war machine . . . Chandrasekaran’s expose is a stark warning to rethink how America uses its power.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Chandrasekaran’s apt portrayal of the Afghan perspective and on-the-ground tensions makes the book a must for policy shapers and voters alike.”
—Mother Jones

“Sharp and subtle . . . Enormously informative . . . Little America does not disappoint.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A must-read account . . . Little America is the best work yet in addressing our military-diplomatic campaign in Afghanistan and the dysfunction that stymies it.”
—Peter J. Munson, Small Wars Journal

“Searing . . . Solid and timely reporting, crackling prose, and more than a little controversy will make this one of the summer’s hot reads.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Clearheaded . . . Well-researched and compelling . . . Chandrasekaran captures the absurdity of a bumbling bureaucracy attempting to reengineer in its own image a society that is half a world away . . . A timely, convincing portrait of an occupation in crisis.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Drawing on interviews with key participants and three years of first-hand reportage, Chandrasekaran delivers a bracing diagnosis of the problem.”
—Booklist