Imperial Life in the Emerald City

WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONMADE INTO THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, GREEN ZONE'Full of jaw-dropping tales of the myriad large and small ways in which Bremer and his team poured fuel into the lethal cauldron that is today's Iraq' Washington Post'A vividly detailed portrait of the Green Zone and the Coalition Provisional Authority that becomes a metaphor for the administration's larger failings in Iraq' New York Times----------From inside a surreal bubble of pure Americana known as the Green Zone, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority attempted to rule Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Drawing on interviews and internal documents, Rajiv Chandrasekaran tells the memorable story of this ill-prepared attempt to build American democracy in a war-torn Middle Eastern country, detailing not only the risky disbanding of the Iraqi army and the ludicrous attempt to train the new police force, but absurdities such as the aide who based Baghdad's new traffic laws on those of the state of Maryland, downloaded from the net, and the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of revitalising Baghdad's stock exchange. Imperial Life in the Emerald City is American reportage at its best.----------'Black comedy, set in the graveyard of the neo-conservative dream. Superb' John le Carré, author of SIlverview'A riveting tale of American misadventure . a mission doomed to failure before it had even been launched' Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell'An indispensable saga of how the American liberation of Iraq turned to chaos, calamity, and civil war' Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn