The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley

ISBN: 0812995066

Author: Morgan, Wesley

Condition: New

COLBY AWARD WINNER One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war.-Foreign PolicyA saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak.-Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are ComingOf the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The areas rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of Americas two-decade-long Afghan war.Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps-some kept secret from even the troops fighting there-that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first centurys most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.