The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia
Gregory D Johnsen
(Author)
Description
Far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and al-Qaeda are fighting a clandestine war of drones and suicide bombers in an unforgiving corner of Arabia.The Last Refuge charts the rise, fall, and resurrection of al-Qaeda in Yemen over the last thirty years, detailing how a group that the United States once defeated has now become one of the world's most dangerous threats. An expert on Yemen who has spent years on the ground there, Gregory D. Johnsen uses al-Qaeda's Arabic battle notes to reconstruct their world as they take aim at the United States and its allies. Johnsen brings readers in-side al-Qaeda's training camps and safe houses as the terrorists plot poison attacks and debate how to bring down an airliner on Christmas Day. The Last Refuge is an eye-opening look at the successes and failures of fighting a new type of war in one of the most turbulent countries in the world.
Product Details
Price
$27.95
$25.99
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date
November 19, 2012
Pages
352
Dimensions
6.42 X 1.16 X 9.51 inches | 1.47 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780393082425
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Gregory D. Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, is a PhD candidate at Princeton University and the Michael Hastings National Security Fellow at BuzzFeed. A frequent guest on NPR, he has contributed essays to the New York Times. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
Reviews
Gripping and insightful.
Johnsen... has produced the first comprehensive history of the al Qaeda movement [in Yemen]: an engrossing account of the operations, personalities, and motivations that have caused the US such headaches.
The Last Refuge offers a valuable look at al-Qaeda's operational history in Yemen. Gregory Johnsen has done us all a service by explaining the country, the threats, and why we should pay attention.--Ali H. Soufan, author of The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda
The Last Refuge is an authoritative and deftly written account of al-Qaeda's Yemeni incarnation. The book is dense with terrorist genealogies, but it also offers a lively portrait of the American government's stumbling efforts to understand and influence a profoundly alien culture. His account, starting in the 1980s, implicitly places Yemen near the center of the global jihadi movement; it may not be where al-Qaeda started, but it has always furnished many of the movement's foot soldiers, and it has now succeeded Afghanistan as the US government's most urgent concern about counterterrorism.--Robert R. Worth
Johnsen... has produced the first comprehensive history of the al Qaeda movement [in Yemen]: an engrossing account of the operations, personalities, and motivations that have caused the US such headaches.
The Last Refuge offers a valuable look at al-Qaeda's operational history in Yemen. Gregory Johnsen has done us all a service by explaining the country, the threats, and why we should pay attention.--Ali H. Soufan, author of The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda
The Last Refuge is an authoritative and deftly written account of al-Qaeda's Yemeni incarnation. The book is dense with terrorist genealogies, but it also offers a lively portrait of the American government's stumbling efforts to understand and influence a profoundly alien culture. His account, starting in the 1980s, implicitly places Yemen near the center of the global jihadi movement; it may not be where al-Qaeda started, but it has always furnished many of the movement's foot soldiers, and it has now succeeded Afghanistan as the US government's most urgent concern about counterterrorism.--Robert R. Worth
