Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile - April 2003

New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, April 2003. Hardcover. First Edition (stated) / full number line. Near Fine book in a Near Fine jacket. Interior unmarked. Spine straight and tight. Light shelfwear to cover. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. x + 550 pages.

The extraordinary story of the CIA's arming of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, pressure mounted for the Americans to support the Afghan resistance. Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from East Texas who sat on the powerful House Defense Appropriations Committee, persuaded his colleagues to allocate $10 million to fund the CIA's effort to arm the Mujahideen. Funding eventually grew to over $1 billion a year. This book is a remarkable account of the last battle of the Cold War, a battle that helped weaken the Soviet Union and led to its collapse and, of course, paved the way to the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda, with consequences that we are dealing with today.