Most Popular Books by Elliot Ackerman

From a decorated Marine war veteran and National Book Award finalist, an astonishing reckoning with the nature of combat and the human cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. "War hath determined us..." - John Milton, Paradise Lost Toward the beginning of Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman sits in a refugee camp in southern Turkey, across the table from a man named Abu Hassar, who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after establishing a rapport with Abu Hassar, he takes a risk by revealing to him that in fact he was a Marine special operation officer. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary quickly joins him in the game of filling in the map with the names and dates of places where they saw fighting during the war. They had shadowed each other for some time, it turned out, a realization that brought them to a strange kind of intimacy. The rest of Elliot Ackerman''s extraordinary memoir is in a way an answer to the question of why he came to that refugee camp, and what he hoped to find there. By moving back and forth between his recent experiences on the ground as a journalist in Syria and its environs and his deeper past in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of remarkable atmospheric pressurization. Ackerman shares vivid and powerful stories of his own experiences in combat, culminating in the events of the Second Battle of Fallujah, the most intense urban combat for the Marines since Hue in Vietnam, where Ackerman''s actions leading a rifle platoon saw him awarded the Silver Star. He weaves these stories into the latticework of a masterful larger reckoning with contemporary geopolitics through his vantage as a journalist in Istanbul and with the human extremes of both bravery and horror. At once an intensely personal story about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the larger meaning of the past two decades of strife for America, the region, and the world, Places and Names bids fair to take its place among our greatest books about modern war.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • NPR • The Christian Science Monitor • Military Times • Vogue • Bloomberg Haris Abadi, a wayward Arab American with a conflicted past, has finally found his purpose: he will cross into Syria and join the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive regime. But before he can get there, he is robbed and abandoned on the Turkish side of the border. Fortunately for Haris, he is picked up by Amir, a charismatic revolutionary turned refugee. Amir’s wife, Daphne, is a beautiful, grief-stricken woman who shares Haris’s longing to make it into Syria—but for altogether different reasons. As he grows closer to the couple who rescued him, Haris must confront his own motivations and ask himself what kind of man—radical or idealist, hero or coward—he truly is.

An instant New York Times Bestseller! “Consider this another vaccine against disaster. Fortunately, this dose won''t cause a temporary fever—and it happens to be a rippingly good read.” —Wired “This crisply written and well-paced book reads like an all-caps warning for a world shackled to the machines we carry in our pockets and place on our laps . . ." —The Washington Post From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034—and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt''s destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America''s faith in its military''s strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand. So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically outmaneuvering America''s most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters--Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians--as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power. Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors'' years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.

A "debut novel about a young Afghan orphan and the harrowing, intractable nature of war"--Amazon.com.

From the widely acclaimed author of Waiting for Eden: a stirring, timely new novel that unfolds in Istanbul over the course of a single day, when an American woman attempts to leave behind her life in Turkey--and her marriage. Catherine has been married for many years to Murat, an influential Turkish real estate developer, and they have a young son, William. But when she decides to return home to the United States with William and her lover, Peter, Murat takes a stand. He enlists the help of an American diplomat to prevent them from going--and, in so doing, becomes further enmeshed in a web of deception and corruption. As the hidden architecture of these relationships is gradually exposed, we move to the heart of intersecting worlds populated by struggling artists, wealthy businessmen, expats, spies. And, at the center, a child torn between his parents. Riveting and perceptive, Red Dress in Black and White is a novel of personal and political intrigue, a portrait of a nation on the brink.

“The American betrayal of Afghanistan took twenty years. Elliot Ackerman, a participant and witness, tells the story with unsparing honesty in this intensely personal chronicle.” —George Packer A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war’s echoing legacy Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and later as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. Afghan nationals who had worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities for years now faced brutal reprisal and sought frantically to flee the country with their families. The official US government evacuation effort was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. With former colleagues and friends protecting the airport in Kabul, Ackerman joined an impromptu effort by a group of journalists and other veterans to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America''s longest war. For Ackerman, it also became a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week, the week the war ended. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves a personal history of the war''s long progression, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts, the fifth act being the story’s tragic denouement, a prelude to Afghanistan''s dark future. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war’s trajectory will find a trenchant account here. But The Fifth Act also brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, American and Afghan, who fought the war with courage and dedication, and at great personal cost. Ackerman''s story is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.

A Times Political Book of the Year 2022 A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war’s echoing legacy.

“Patiently, and unflinchingly, Ackerman is becoming one of the great poet laureates of America’s tragic adventurism across the globe.” —Pico Iyer Eden lies in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his room. We see them through the eyes of Eden’s best friend, a fellow Marine who didn’t make it back home—and who must relive the secrets held between all three of them as he waits for Eden to finally, mercifully die and join him in whatever comes after. A breathtakingly spare and shattering novel that explores the unseen aftereffects—and unacknowledged casualties—of war, Waiting for Eden is a piercingly insightful, deeply felt meditation on loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and love. “The Tim O’Brien of our era.” —Vogue “Devastating.” —The Wall Street Journal “Haunting. . . . Daring.” —The Boston Globe “Heart-wrenching.” —NPR

A daring new novel, at once timely and timeless, set around an American family and the ever-shifting sands of history and memory and legacy that define them (“An expert juggling act.” —Stephen Markley, New York Times Book Review) Martin Neumann, recently divorced, is living at Halcyon, the Virginia estate of renowned lawyer, family patriarch, and World War II hero Robert Ableson. It’s 2004, and Gore is entering his second term as president, when news breaks that scientists have discovered a cure for death. Suddenly, Martin is forced to question everything he thought he understood about the world around him. Who is Ableson, really? Why has Martin been drawn into the Ablesons’ most closely guarded family secrets? Is this new science a miraculous good or an insidious evil? From pivotal elections to crumbling marriages, from the Civil War to the Battle of Saipan, Halcyon is a profound and probing novel that grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.

Two Misfits. One Mission. Zero Back-Up. • When a high-stakes heist goes wrong, an ex-CIA operative and a special operations pilot find themselves in the middle of a game of espionage and survival as they navigate a treacherous web of deception and shifting loyalties in a globe-spanning, action-packed thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of 2034. "Move Sheepdogs to the top of your list!”—Jack Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author “A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride.”—Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck and about to find themselves tangled in the heist of their lives. Skwerl, once an elite member of the CIA''s paramilitary unit, was cast out after a raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a former Afghan pilot of legendary skill, now works the graveyard shift at a gas station. Recruited into a shadowy network of "sheepdogs," they embark on a mission to repossess a multi-million-dollar private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. But as they wind through a labyrinth of lies and hidden agendas, they discover that nothing is as it seems. Their contact vanishes, their handler''s motives are suspect, and the true source of their payday remains a mystery. With the stakes skyrocketing and the women in their lives drawn into the fray, this unlikely spy duo find themselves deep in the underbelly of modern war and intelligence. From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, they''ll need to be as cunning as they are bold to survive in a game where the line between the hunters and the hunted is razor-thin.

A Vintage Shorts Original Selection “Why do some forms of violence—the beheading of journalists by the Islamic State, a bombing in Ankara, or the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando—make us feel so threatened, while other forms—the 372 separate mass shootings in America in 2015 or the 4,219 Syrians killed that same September—do little to challenge our sense of safety?” From his base in Istanbul, Elliot Ackerman has written letters and essays that explore how global and seemingly remote issues like terrorism, US foreign policy, and other geopolitical forces play out and wreak distress upon the quotidian lives of civilians. Here assembled into a haunting piece, the fragments of a year’s notes open a window into life under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s oppressive and nationalistic right-wing regime, the civil war in Syria, and the disintegration of the old order in the Middle-East. Exposing how a pervasive rhetoric of fear can shape a society and written with intimacy and a tremendous amount of compassion, this is an astute political commentary and first-person travel narrative par excellence. An ebook short.

From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034, another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America’s violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that’s held power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war. A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world’s great powers, old and new, state and nonstate alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy. Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech, and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination.

Mary veille sur son mari Eden tous les jours depuis trois ans. Mutilé en Irak, il est cloué sur un lit d''hôpital, emmuré dans son corps. Leur fille Andy grandit dans cette chambre, entre un père coincé entre la vie et la mort et une mère qui espère malgré tout. Un jour de Noël, Eden semble soudainement réagir aux signaux du monde extérieur. Mary est persuadée qu''elle seule peut interpréter les paroles silencieuses de son mari et décider de son destin. Cependant, certains secrets de leur mariage resurgissent, et elle devra y faire face. « C''est un choc littéraire à l''état pur. » - Bernard Poirette, Radio Classique

«Essere capace di riflettere sulle cose ultime è ciò che trasforma un uomo che scrive in un vero scrittore. Ed Ackerman è uno scrittore di prim''ordine.» D - la Repubblica «Elliot Ackerman ha posato il fucile e preso la penna, per ritrovare l''umanità.» Vanity Fair «Prima di diventare scrittore, Ackerman è stato un marine e ha combattuto in Afghanistan e in Iraq. Era un ragazzo colto, benestante, e non avrebbe avuto alcun bisogno di arruolarsi. Eppure, dopo l''11 settembre, ha sentito il dovere di farlo e quel che ci restituisce è un racconto di guerra unico, che smonta una ad una tutte le convinzioni che abbiamo su termini come "onore" e "vendetta". Nei Paesi dilaniati dalla guerra, spesso non si combatte né per l''uno, né per l''altra, ma per necessità e, nel caso di Aziz, anche per amore.» Roberto Saviano «Un romanzo toccante, forte e crudo: una storia di vendetta, lealtà e amore tra fratelli.» Khaled Hosseini, autore del Cacciatore di aquiloni «Un romanzo che rappresenta appieno, con un grande potere immaginifico, l''impatto che decenni di guerra hanno avuto sulla popolazione afghana. Allo stesso tempo si struttura come una sorta di tragedia antica, sui sentimenti di violenza e vendetta che consumano famiglie e tribù generazione dopo generazione.» The New York Times Aziz e il fratello maggiore Ali vivono in un villaggio sperduto, sotto le imponenti montagne dell’Afghanistan orientale. Non vanno a scuola, ma la madre insegna loro a leggere e a scrivere, e una volta al mese li manda al bazar, a due giorni di viaggio. Una famiglia povera, ma la loro casa dalle pareti di fango è piena di amore. Il mondo attorno però non lo è e un giorno nel villaggio irrompe un gruppo di uomini armati, segnando per sempre le loro vite. Unici scampati al tremendo attacco, i due ragazzini trovano rifugio in una cittadina dove, prima vivendo di espedienti e poi grazie all’aiuto di un commerciante, cominciano a rimettere insieme la loro esistenza. Compreso nel ruolo di fratello maggiore, con i pochi soldi che riesce a guadagnare Ali decide di mandare Aziz a scuola. Ma gli uomini armati stanno per tornare, e per colpire di nuovo. Una bomba esplode nella piazza del mercato e Ali rimane gravemente ferito. In ospedale Aziz incontra un suo compatriota che indossa un’uniforme dell’esercito statunitense e scopre l’esistenza dello Special Lashkar, un commando afghano alleato a quelli che aveva sempre considerato nemici. È l’unica via per regalare al fratello una vita degna di essere vissuta. Non più ragazzo e non ancora uomo, Aziz si unisce alla milizia. Sarà un viaggio dentro un conflitto brutale e assurdo, in cui faticherà a trovare il suo posto, in bilico tra la voce del cuore e il desiderio di vendetta...

«Un romanzo necessario ed emozionante. Un ritratto forte e sfaccettato della Guerra civile in Siria.» Publishers Weekly «Il buio al crocevia si prepara ad essere uno dei libri fondamentali del 2017.» Esquire «Il buio al crocevia non è solo una riflessione sul rimorso, il tradimento, l''amore e la perdita, ma è anche un viaggio che ci riporta al bellissimo e dilaniato mondo in cui viviamo.» Washington Post «Ackerman scrive con empatia, cognizione di causa, e una grande integrità morale.» Booklist È notte quando Haris Abadi si ritrova all’improvviso disteso per terra, a respirare polvere e fango, mentre mani sconosciute gli sfilano di tasca tutto, soldi, cartina, passaporto. Cittadino americano di origine irachena, con alle spalle una triste storia famigliare, Haris si trova in Turchia per attraversare il confine siriano e unirsi alla lotta contro il regime di Bashar al-Assad. Derubato di tutto, si vede quasi costretto a rinunciare all’impresa quando incontra Amir, un rifugiato siriano ed ex rivoluzionario che gli offre ospitalità e aiuto. Amir è sposato con Daphne, una donna di grande fascino ma incapace di nascondere come vorrebbe le sue inquietudini. Haris capisce subito che anche Daphne desidera disperatamente raggiungere la Siria. Ma questa consapevolezza porterà con sé nuovi, angoscianti dubbi: da che parte vuole davvero schierarsi, quella donna? Sarà possibile per entrambi ridare senso a una vita così sofferta? Scritto con grande partecipazione e la consapevolezza di chi conosce profondamente il conflitto che racconta, Il buio al crocevia è un viaggio tra miserie umane e inattese opportunità, nel cuore oscuro di una guerra dove l’amore e l’orrore sembrano sorgere dalla stessa radice.

A gripping drama and chilling prophecy about the possible path to war for a planet devastated by climate change In their novel 2034, decorated military officers and award-winning authors Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis imagined a war between the US and China. In their follow-up novel, 2054, they envisioned a breakdown in American politics fueled by a radical advance in AI. Now they make their boldest, most astonishing, and arguably most necessary leap—imagining the consequences of a climate war. By the year 2084, the world is divided into the equatorial countries that bear the brunt of the climate crisis—led by Nigeria, Brazil, and Indonesia—and wealthier countries like China and the US, beset by their own problems after a series of civil wars. Tensions between the two sets of countries have reached a breaking point, until finally the so-called Reparationist nations of the equator decide that only military force can bring them justice. A fascinating and disturbingly plausible extrapolation from current realities, 2084, like other classics of the genre such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock, deploys a global cast of characters, all protecting their interests as the fate of human civilization hangs in the balance. Individuals often seem small in the face of the forces that drive global change, but in the end human agency proves surprisingly decisive. Big doors can swing on small hinges. We have it within ourselves to write a different destiny, if only we can imagine it.

Dopo un lungo volo militare dall’Afghanistan agli Stati Uniti, Eden giace in un letto d’ospedale, incapace di muoversi e di parlare. È miracolosamente sopravvissuto a un attentato durante una missione militare, ma le sue condizioni sono gravissime. A vegliare sul suo corpo lacerato dalle ferite e a sperare che il cielo lo lasci in vita, c’è la moglie Mary. Ma insieme a loro, in quella stanza, c’è qualcun altro. Qualcuno che spera e prega per Eden. E che ci racconta la sua vera storia. Pagina dopo pagina, scopriamo a chi appartiene la voce narrante, quella di un commilitone di Eden che era presente nel momento dell’attentato e che ha avuto un destino diverso dall’amico ferito: vite che si incrociano e poi si separano, ma non per questo restano distanti. Perché ogni distanza può essere azzerata dall’amore. In ogni condizione. Mentre Eden lotta per la vita, il suo compagno ripercorre i momenti più terribili, i segreti, le battaglie, i sentimenti che li hanno portati a condividere il presente. Aspettando il cielo è un romanzo toccante, che esplora i traumi meno visibili della guerra, interrogandosi sui valori della lealtà e dell’amicizia, sul tradimento e sull’amore.

Au cours d''une mission de routine en mer de Chine, la commodore américaine Sarah Hunt repère un chalutier en détresse et décide de lui porter assistance. Un choix dangereux, car les Chinois revendiquent leur souveraineté sur ces eaux contestées. Dans le même temps, un F-35 américain surarmé et son pilote, Chris "Wedge" Mitchell, tombent aux mains de l''armée iranienne. Ces incidents apparemment isolés vont mettre en branle une implacable mécanique de confrontation. Personne ne souhaitant l''apocalypse nucléaire, chaque puissance joue au plus serré. Mais peut-on jamais tout prévoir ?