9781101043974
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The Gamble audiobook

  • By: Thomas E. Ricks
  • Narrator: James Lurie
  • Category: History, Military, Other
  • Length: 10 hours 15 minutes
  • Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
  • Publish date: January 01, 2009
  • Language: English
  • (2223 ratings)
(2223 ratings)
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The Gamble Audiobook Summary

Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks’s #1 New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq—The Gamble is the next news breaking installment

Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.

Since early 2007 a new military order has directed American strategy. Some top U.S. officials now in Iraq actually opposed the 2003 invasion, and almost all are severely critical of how the war was fought from then through 2006. At the core of the story is General David Petraeus, a military intellectual who has gathered around him an unprecedented number of officers with both combat experience and Ph.D.s. Underscoring his new and unorthodox approach, three of his key advisers are quirky foreigners—an Australian infantryman-turned- anthropologist, an antimilitary British woman who is an expert in the Middle East, and a Mennonite-educated Palestinian pacifist.

The Gamble offers news-breaking account, revealing behind-the-scenes disagreements between top commanders. We learn that almost every single officer in the chain of command fought the surge. Many of Petraeus’s closest advisers went to Iraq extremely pessimistic, doubting that the surge would have any effect, and his own boss was so skeptical that he dispatched an admiral to Baghdad in the summer of 2007 to come up with a strategy to replace Petraeus’s. That same boss later flew to Iraq to try to talk Petraeus out of his planned congressional testimony. The Gamble examines the congressional hearings through the eyes of Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and their views of the questions posed by the 2008 presidential candidates.

For Petraeus, prevailing in Iraq means extending the war. Thomas E. Ricks concludes that the war is likely to last another five to ten years—and that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that “the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened.”

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The Gamble Audiobook Narrator

James Lurie is the narrator of The Gamble audiobook that was written by Thomas E. Ricks

About the Author(s) of The Gamble

Thomas E. Ricks is the author of The Gamble

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The Gamble Full Details

Narrator James Lurie
Length 10 hours 15 minutes
Author Thomas E. Ricks
Category
Publisher Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date April 27, 2024
ISBN 9781101043974

Subjects

The publisher of the The Gamble is Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. includes the following subjects: david petraeus, iraq, military, military history, war, world history, military history books, army, gifts for dad, dad gifts, gifts for history buffs, battles, historical books, history, history books, fathers day gifts, history gifts, history teacher gifts, army books, history buff gifts, middle east history, middle east history books, history lovers gifts, american history, society, journalism, modern, biography, essays, osprey, culture, us history, 21st century, warfare, political science, historical, social studies, History, Military, Other, History, Modern, 21st Century, History, Middle East, General The BISAC Subject Code is History, Military, Other

Additional info

The publisher of the The Gamble is Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. The imprint is Penguin Audio. It is supplied by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. The ISBN-13 is 9781101043974.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

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