Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone - Hardcover

Shephard, Michelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155365658X ISBN 13: 9781553656586

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011

Synopsis

Decade of Fear is a darkly entertaining journey through the complicated, often bizarre world of national security since 9/11. On that night, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard watched the remains of New York’s World Trade Center fall from the sky, wondering what much of the world was asking: Why?” So began a ten-year search for answers that took her through the streets of Mogadishu and Karachi, into the mountains of Waziristan and behind the wire of Guantanamo Bay two dozen times.

Shephard conducted hundreds of interviews worldwide, and with sharp insight and an appreciation for the absurd, she weaves together stories of warlords, presidents, spies, grieving widows and global terrorists, to describe the historic decade where often the West’s solutions” for terrorism only served to exacerbate the problem. She cruises with former CIA bosses, runs alongside protestors in the streets of Sanaa to escape fire from Yemen’s security services during experience the Arab Spring, meets victims of terrorism who leave her devastated, and earns enough stamps on her Gitmo Starbucks card for a free latte. Gripping, heartbreaking and infuriating, Decade of Fear broadens our understanding of a decade that was all too often described through panicked rhetoric.

About this title

About the Author:

Michelle Shephard is the Toronto Star's national security reporter and speaks frequently on issues concerning terrorism and civil rights. She has appeared on CNN, NBC, Al Jazeera, BBC, and CBC and has contributed to or been quoted in the New York Times and Guardian as well as other television, radio, newspaper and magazines throughout Canada, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Shephard has won Canada's top two newspaper awards -- the National Newspaper Award for Investigations and the Governor General's Michener Award for public service journalism. Her first book, Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr, was published in March 2008 to wide acclaim.

Review:

Michelle Shephard is one of the great national security reporters of our time. In this age of journalists’ embedded in their air-conditioned offices, she is a rare exception: a real reporter”—Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Michelle Shephard has delivered a wide-ranging, well-written, witty account of the war that began on 9/11 that is also a serious, knowledgeable and empathetic journey ...She takes the reader on quite a ride. My advice: Go along!”
Peter L. Bergen, author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda and Holy War, Inc

Reading Decade of Fear is essential to understanding the post-9/11 world. ... If you care about the world you live in and can only read one book this year, this should be it.” Marina Nemat, author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran

...so thrilling and terrific, I wish it wasn’t true.”
Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Through her outstanding reporting, Michelle recounts how the war on terror’ has yet to be won and bears witness to the consequences of a decade in which justice was not blind, and the world was only viewed through the prism of fear.”
Lt. General (ret) Senator Romeo Dallaire, author of Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

About this edition

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 155365658X
• ISBN 13: 9781553656586
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320