by Jane Mayer
First published 2008
Jane Mayer examines how America's response to September 11th transformed the presidency and abandoned constitutional principles. She reveals how Vice President Dick Cheney and his adviser David Addington seized upon the national crisis to implement their vision of unchecked executive authority. The book documents the chaos and fear that drove radical policy decisions in those early days. Mayer traces the consequences of these choices through specific cases of detained prisoners, many innocent, who endured treatment resembling medieval torture chambers. She shows how these methods sometimes produced intelligence but more often generated false information that led to catastrophic mistakes. The confession of Sheikh Ibn al-Libi stands as a prime example: his fabricated testimony, given to stop his suffering, became crucial evidence supporting the Iraq War. Mayer argues that whatever tactical advantages these policies provided came at enormous cost to America's moral authority and global standing. The book presents this period as a turning point that will define George W. Bush's presidential legacy.
Genres: history, political-science, politics, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, current-affairs, american-history
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, political-thriller
Setting: America
Period: 21st-century
392 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday
Content warnings: torture