Elliot Ackerman Knihy

A powerful eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war's legacy. Elliot Ackerman, a former military officer, was deeply marked by his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the Taliban advanced on Kabul in August 2021, he was drawn back into the conflict as Afghan nationals who had supported the U.S. military faced brutal reprisals and sought to escape. The U.S. government's evacuation efforts proved disastrous, leading to a humanitarian crisis. Ackerman, alongside journalists and veterans, initiated an impromptu mission to negotiate with Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. This effort provided a measure of redemption and a chance for Ackerman to reconcile his past with his present. The narrative captures the weight of twenty years of war during a critical week at its end, intertwining personal history with the broader context of the conflict that began after 9/11. It presents a nuanced view of the war's trajectory, focusing on the remarkable individuals—both American and Afghan—who fought with courage and dedication. Ackerman's storytelling balances the complex realities of the post-9/11 wars, offering readers insights into the experiences and sacrifices of combatants. This account serves as a first draft of history, resonating with timeless significance.

In a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and has murky connections to the Islamic State. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that he was a Marine. The two men then compare their fighting experiences in the Middle East, discovering they had shadowed each other for some time- a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy. Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir explores the events that led him to come to this refugee camp, and what he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent time on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure, one which blends the American experience with the perspectives and stories of the Arab world. At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for the region and the world, Places and Names bids to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.

A "debut novel about a young Afghan orphan and the harrowing, intractable nature of war"--Amazon.com.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • NPR • The Christian Science Monitor • Military Times • Vogue • Bloomberg Haris Abadi, a wayward Arab American with a conflicted past, has finally found his purpose: he will cross into Syria and join the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive regime. But before he can get there, he is robbed and abandoned on the Turkish side of the border. Fortunately for Haris, he is picked up by Amir, a charismatic revolutionary turned refugee. Amir’s wife, Daphne, is a beautiful, grief-stricken woman who shares Haris’s longing to make it into Syria—but for altogether different reasons. As he grows closer to the couple who rescued him, Haris must confront his own motivations and ask himself what kind of man—radical or idealist, hero or coward—he truly is.

A chilling geopolitical thriller and real-world cautionary tale presenting a dark yet very possible future of war between the US and China - from two former military officers and award-winning authors THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 'A rippingly good read' Wired ______________ 12 March 2034. In the South China Sea, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is conducting routine freedom of navigation patrol while US Marine aviator Major Chris 'Wedge' Mitchell tests a new stealth technology near Iranian airspace. By the end of the day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the ocean. And a new, terrifying era will be at hand. So begins a disturbingly plausible novel, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral. Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground, informed by the authors' years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Because sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings. 'I could not stop reading 2034' Phil Klay, author of Redeployment 2054: A NOVEL IS OUT NOW

"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.

A daring new novel, at once timely and timeless, set around an American family and the ever-shifting sands of history and memory and legacy that define them (“An expert juggling act.” —Stephen Markley, New York Times Book Review) Martin Neumann, recently divorced, is living at Halcyon, the Virginia estate of renowned lawyer, family patriarch, and World War II hero Robert Ableson. It’s 2004, and Gore is entering his second term as president, when news breaks that scientists have discovered a cure for death. Suddenly, Martin is forced to question everything he thought he understood about the world around him. Who is Ableson, really? Why has Martin been drawn into the Ablesons’ most closely guarded family secrets? Is this new science a miraculous good or an insidious evil? From pivotal elections to crumbling marriages, from the Civil War to the Battle of Saipan, Halcyon is a profound and probing novel that grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.

'Don't venture into the future without having read this book' ANDREW ROBERTS It is twenty years on from the nuclear war between the US and China that brought down the old world order, and the American president has held power for over a decade. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. A cover-up ensues, the administration announces his death and the country descends into civil war. Everything points to a remote assassination made possible by a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this world transforming breakthrough. As the world's great powers struggle to outmanoeuvre one another in this Great Game of scientific discovery, an American crisis threatens to spiral into a global one. 2054 is an explosive thriller and a real-world cautionary tale about the path we are on, from two former military officers and award-winning authors who have seen the future. 'A compelling, terrifying and totally plausible thriller of future world history and calamity' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 'This kind of fiction can induce a kind of sublime awe at the complexity of the global networks in which we're enmeshed' HARI KUNZRU, THE NEW YORK TIMES 'A satisfying combination of two very different things: "chilling vision of things to come" and "page-turning beach read"' DAILY TELEGRAPH