March 1, 2022
A former U.S. Marine and CIA paramilitary officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ackerman deepened our understanding of war with three novels, including the National Book Award-nominated Dark at the Crossing, and two Andrew Carnegie long-listed works of nonfiction. Here he documents the end of the longest war in U.S. history as he explains how he converged on the Kabul airport with friends, journalists, veterans, and former colleagues to help negotiate the safe evacuation of hundreds of Afghan nationals who had assisted U.S. military and intelligence communities. What results is a view of 20 years' worth of conflict, encompassed in a week and highlighting the commitment of those who fought.
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June 13, 2022
A veteran ponders America’s “harried withdrawal” from Afghanistan in this haunting memoir. Journalist and novelist Ackerman (Dark at the Crossing) served in Afghanistan as a Marine and CIA officer until 2011; here he recounts his efforts last summer during the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul to help Afghans who worked with the U.S. to flee the country. It’s a harrowing portrait of chaos and collapse: working mainly by text message from Italy, Ackerman—with the help of an improvised personal network of journalists, officials, and sympathetic Marine buddies—helped thread evacuees through a gauntlet of Taliban checkpoints, desperate crowds, and suspicious American sentinels to get to flights out of Kabul’s besieged airport. The nerve-wracking operation frames his recollections of weathering firefights in Afghanistan, witnessing the deaths of comrades, and agonizing over dangerous missions to recover their bodies. Writing in evocative, gripping prose—“Blood, like spilled paint, stained the side of the hood and wheel well.... The major sat inside the RG-33, dazed like a prizefighter between rounds, clutching a radio handset he wasn’t talking into”—Ackerman provides a clear-eyed indictment of America’s failures in Afghanistan while paying homage to the soldiers who fought there. The result is a moving elegy for a blighted struggle. Photos. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.
Starred review from June 15, 2022
Making sense of chaos is never easy, but this powerful book does much to explain why America's debacle in Afghanistan ended the way it did. Ackerman, who spent years in the region as a frontline soldier and later as a CIA paramilitary officer, brings firsthand experience of combat as well as a knowledge of classical literature to the story. He is also the author of multiple acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including Green on Blue, Places and Names, and Red Dress in Black & White. In his latest, Ackerman focuses on the final week of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, when a flood of Afghans clamored to evacuate. The fifth act of the book's title, this period encompassed the climax and denouement of the ordeal--and, much like the events of the previous 20 years, it was a catastrophic mess. The author tried to help old friends and their families escape, working with a network of other veterans and in-country players. Adding a sense of bizarre surrealism, he did most of this by phone while on a family holiday, trying to shield them from the unfolding disaster. The attack at the Kabul airport, which killed more than 180 people, added another layer of mayhem. "If it wasn't clear already," Ackerman writes, "after the bombing at Abbey Gate it becomes evident that the Biden administration has handled the evacuation of Afghanistan with an exceptional degree of incompetence." However, it's clear the author could not walk away, and he explains why in chapters about his time in the field, fighting a conflict that seemed increasingly futile. While noting that Afghanistan has never really known peace, he hopes that American actions have contributed to the destruction of the country's infrastructure of terrorism. Ackerman should be commended not just for his work helping Afghans escape safely, but also for providing a must-read account of the end of America's longest war. Courage and folly, dedication and tragedy: Ackerman deftly captures all dimensions of a protracted foreign policy failure.
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July 1, 2022
Ackerman, an acclaimed novelist (2034, 2021) and memoirist (Places and Names, 2019), breaks down his involvement in Afghanistan into five phases that focus on his combat deployments in-country as a marine infantry officer, as a CIA paramilitary officer overseeing Afghan commandos and counterterrorism units, and his coordinating with colleagues to oversee our Afghan allies' evacuation from the airport the week before the Taliban took power in August 2021. The Taliban victory was really more of an unconditional surrender by the U.S., Ackerman notes. This book, while not a comprehensive analysis of the full 20 years of war in Afghanistan, is powerful testimony to what went wrong despite the bravery of American military personnel and our Afghan allies. Ackerman reflects on his personal and professional journeys in Afghanistan; his analysis says much about America and why the way the nation fights twenty-first-century wars has little impact on the general public and why there is so little accountability for failure. Ackerman's tales are compelling and heartfelt; this title will stand the test of time as a warning against further military misadventures.
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