Night Draws Near Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War [Paperback]

Winner of the 2005Los Angeles TimesBook Prize
AWashington Post Book WorldTop Five Nonfiction Book of the Year
ASeattle TimesTop Ten Best Book of the Year
ANew York TimesNotable Book of the Year

In 2003,The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid went to war in Iraq, but not as an embedded journalist. Born and raised in Oklahoma, of Lebanese descent, Shadid, a fluent Arabic speaker, has spent the last three years dividing his time between Washington, D.C., and Baghdad. The only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his extraordinary coverage of Iraq, Shadid is also the only writer to describe the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the unexpected impact of America's invasion and occupation. Through the moving stories of individual Iraqis, Shadid shows how Saddam's downfall paved the way not just for hopes of democracy but also for the importation of jihad and the rise of a bloody insurgency. A superb reporter's book, wrote Seymour Hersh;Night Draws Nearis, according to Mark Danner, essential.

Anthony Shadidhas reported for the Associated Press,The Boston Globe,and, since the beginning of the war in Iraq,The Washington Post. In addition to the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, his stories from Iraq have earned him an American Society of Newspaper Editors award for deadline news reporting and the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire-service reporting from abroad. While atThe Boston Globe,Shadid was awarded the 2002 George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting for a series of dispatches from the Middle East. An Arab-American of Lebanese descent, he was born and raised in Oklahoma and now lives in Washington, D.C., and Baghdad.

Incisive and eloquent . . . A harrowing portrait of life in postwar Iraq and the fallout that the American war has had on ordinary Iraqi civilians . . . A riveting narrative . . lsè