The Ultimate AfPak Reading List

A guide to the most critical readings on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

BY PETER BERGEN | OCTOBER 6, 2011

Al Qaeda: The Organization and the Ideological Movement Since the 9/11 Attacks

Books

  • Burke, Jason. The 9/11 Wars. (New York: Penguin, 2011). AfPak Channel review by Daniel Byman - Burke brings the reader from villages in Afghanistan and Iraq to slums in London and France, offering individual portraits of combatants and those overrun by war while also weaving in government policies and scholarly research to portray the broader context.
  • Clarke, Richard, ed. Terrorism: what the next president will face, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 2008.
  • Farah, Douglas. Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror. (New York: Broadway, 2004).
  • Greenberg, Karen, ed. Al Qaeda Now: Understanding Today's Terrorists. (New York: Cambridge, 2005). A stimulating collection of essays.
  • Riedel, Bruce. The Search for al-Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future. (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010).

Articles

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Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist; a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C. where he co-directs the National Security Studies Program; a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security and CNN's national security analyst. He is editor of the AfPak Channel.