The Dark Side

the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals

Jane Mayer

2008 US National Book Award Finalist, Nonfiction

2008 US National Book Critics Critics Award Finalist, Nonfiction

2008 New York Times top-5 non-fiction title

2009 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism

2008 Los Angeles Times book prize nominee (current interest)

A New York Times Bestseller


'This book is a tour de force of reporting.'

Les Carlyon (Australian Literary Review)

'The most compelling, chilling, well-written account to date.'

Ray Bonner (Australian)

'An extraordinary book … Mayer, one of America's finest investigative journalists, powerfully explains how America's leadership made a decision after 9/11 to become a rogue state that supports and encourages the most brutal forms of degradation.'

Antony Loewenstein (Age)

A dramatic and damning narrative account of how America has fought the “War on Terror”

In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the United States were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear, but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.

The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world — decisions that not only violated the Constitution, which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions — U.S.-held prisoners, many of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

The Dark Side relates real, specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of what was happening in Washington, looking at the intelligence gained — or not — and the price paid. In some instances, torture worked. In many more, it led to false information, sometimes with devastating results.

In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and the United States’ place in the world, and its sense of itself. The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history — one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

'A powerful, brilliantly researched and deeply unsettling book … Jane Mayer's extraordinary and invaluable book suggests that it would be difficult to find any precedent in American history for the scale, brutality and illegality of the torture and degradation inflicted on detainees over the last six years.'

Alan Brinkley (The New York Times Book Review cover story)

'Brilliantly reported and deeply disturbing … [a] splendidly executed book.'

Tim Rutten (Los Angeles Times)

'Many books get tagged with the word "essential"; hers actually is.'

Louis Bayard (Salon.com)

'In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. To dismiss these as wild, anti-American ravings will not do. They are facts, which Mayer substantiates in persuasive detail, citing the testimony not of noted liberals like Noam Chomsky or Keith Olbermann but of military officers, intelligence professionals, "hard-line law-and-order stalwarts in the criminal justice system" and impeccably conservative Bush appointees who resisted the conspiracy from within the administration.'

(Washington Post Book World)

'The Dark Side is a formidable piece of reporting. Hopefully it will bolster the case for post-election indictments for some of the injustices described here.'

David Costello (Courier Mail)

Jane Mayer

Jane_mayer

Jane Mayer is the co-author of two bestselling and critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction books, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988, and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Mayer was also awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in connection with The Dark Side.

She is currently a Washington-based staff writer for The New Yorker, specializing in political and investigative reporting. Before that, she was a senior writer and front-page editor for The Wall Street Journal, as well as the Journal's first female White House correspondent.

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Format: Pb
Extent: 400pp +8pp black and white photographs
Size: 234mm x 153mm
ISBN (13): 9781921372506
RRP: $35.00
Pub date: October 2008

Rights held:

ANZ