Our lobby Book & Bumper Sticker library is one of our most popular shop features. All the books, across a huge range of topics, are available to check out whenever you’re in. Client Shannon K. checked out “No Good Men Among the Living” and liked it enough to write a quick review, so we’re shining this month’s Book Spotlight on it for you too. As Shannon, said, “Enjoy!”
“No Good Men Among The Living”
by Anand Gopal
Publisher Comments
“Essential reading for anyone concerned about how America got Afghanistan so wrong. A devastating, well-honed prosecution detailing how our government bungled the initial salvo in the so-called war on terror, ignored attempts by top Taliban leaders to surrender, trusted the wrong people, and backed a feckless and corrupt Afghan regime . . . It is ultimately the most compelling account I’ve read of how Afghans themselves see the war.” –The New York Times Book Review
In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces the lives of three Afghans caught in America’s war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander, who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent; a U.S.-backed warlord, who uses the American military to gain wealth and power; and a village housewife trapped between the two sides, who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Through their dramatic stories, No Good Men Among the Living stunningly lays bare the workings of America’s longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony.
Review from Middle East Research and Information Project
“There are no good men among the living, and no bad ones among the dead.” In the simplest sense, this Pashtun proverb is similar to the common injunction not to speak ill of the departed. In the course of Afghanistan’s long civil war, Anand Gopal writes, the saying has acquired a metaphorical meaning as well: No one is to be trusted. All alliances are temporary. The sole imperative is survival.
It is easy to see, after reading this trenchant account of Afghan life since the 2001 US invasion, why Gopal chose such a grim phrase for his title. Gopal began reporting from Afghanistan for American newspapers and magazines in 2008. In his book, he avoids official or “expert” sources almost entirely, instead telling the story of the war through the memories of three main Afghan characters, none of whom produce the narrative that the war’s propagandists want Americans to hear. Rather than making progress, however stubborn, toward a goal, each protagonist takes a path of dizzying ups and downs that ends, at best, in precipitous uncertainty…”
