num_pages: 365
description: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • National Book Award Finalist • This "eyewitness history of the first order ... should be read by anyone who wants to understand how things went so badly wrong in Iraq” ( The New York Times Book Review ).The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq, 2003: in this walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities, Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority set out to fashion a new, democratic Iraq. Staffed by idealistic aides chosen primarily for their views on issues such as abortion and capital punishment, the CPA spent the crucial first year of occupation pursuing goals that had little to do with the immediate needs of a postwar flat taxes instead of electricity and deregulated health care instead of emergency medical supplies.  In this acclaimed firsthand account, the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post gives us an intimate portrait of life inside this Oz-like bubble, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside. This is a quietly devastating tale of imperial folly, and the definitive history of those early days when things went irrevocably wrong in Iraq.
language: English
title: Imperial Life in The Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
titlecomplete: Imperial Life in The Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
genres: War, American, Politics, Nonfiction, Audiobook, American History, Military History, Military Fiction, Journalism, History
ratings_count: 6237
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Ridenhour Book Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Cornelius Ryan Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Vintage