**SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2024** **A BEST BOOK OF 2024 BY THE NEW YORKER ** From
the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Ghost Wars the inside story of America's
long and ruinous relationship with Saddam Hussein The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles
the people ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and
for the first time details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous
decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979
and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme Steve Coll traces Saddam's motives
through understanding his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats scientists family
members and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader - a leader directly
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as the torture or
imprisonment of many more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple
explanation and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical
nuances in his paranoia resentments and inconsistencies - even when the stakes were incredibly
high. Using unpublished and underreported sources interviews with surviving participants and
Saddam's own transcripts and audio files The Achilles Trap is a remarkable picture of a
dictator who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great
historical significance it is the definitive account of how corruptions of power lies of
diplomacy and vanity - on both sides - led to avoidable errors of statecraft: ones that would
enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change our political landscape.
