It's evident right away, if you didn't already know from his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism for The New Yorker, that Farrow has some serious writing chops to go with a pair of cajones that make me believe his mother's suggestion that his dad is Frank Sinatra and not Woody Allen.įarrow interviewed every living former Secretary of State for this book, from George P. It is largely that background that informs this book. Right now Ronan Farrow is most famous for exposing Hollywood sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves, but before he started kicking ass and taking names in Hollywood, he was a Yale Law graduate, and spent time working under Richard Holbrooke in the State Department. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, short-sightedness, and outright malice-but it may just offer America a way out of a world at war. Farrow’s narrative is richly informed by interviews with whistleblowers, policymakers, and a warlord, from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton. His firsthand experience in the State Department affords a personal look at some of the last standard-bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan.

In an astonishing account ranging from Washington, D.C., to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea in the years since 9/11, acclaimed journalist and former diplomat Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. We’re becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers.

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