'Imperial Life' Wins National Acclaim

AltTulsa's last post gave an overview of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a detailed and persuasive critique of the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003-04.

We aren't the only ones who think highly of this book. Imperial Life was a finalist for the National Book Award earlier this year. This week we learned that the book was named a nonfiction "Notable Book" by the New York Times Book Review.

As we noted in our last entry, the book reveals the folly of the neocon project to create a Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East. The President and his advisers were extraordinarily ill-equipped to take on this task.

We agree with the blurb on the back jacket of our copy: "Every American who wants to understand how and why things went so badly wrong in Iraq should read his book," author Steve Coll wrote.

Interested readers can find out more at the author's website, www.rajivc.com.