*From the New York Times* best-selling author, an eye-opening history of the United States’ war on terror across four presidential administrations.
"With an even hand and expert skill, [Peter Bergen] holds US presidents and policymakers accountable for blunders of historic proportion." —Jane Mayer, The New Yorker staff writer, author of The Dark Side
A Council on Foreign Relations Essential Read to Understand Foreign Policy Better**
2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Within days, the United States began to declare its war on terror: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” President George W. Bush proclaimed. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, a series of misguided wars, and the damaged perception of American power. And yet despite its blunders, this campaign has kept America safe from large-scale foreign attack.
Based on hundreds of interviews, All the Presidents’ Wars focuses on critical decisions of four successive presidents—Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump—and their global consequences. One of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden and have unparalleled access to the US intelligence community, Peter Bergen covers the history that might have been avoided: the many terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups around the world; the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, largely responsible for the Iraqi civil war in the mid-2000s; the birth of ISIS; the resurrection of Afghanistan’s Taliban; and Trump’s war with Iran. From the failure to capture and the eventual killing of Osama bin Laden to the disastrous rise of sectarian violence in the Middle East, Bergen traces the profound ramifications of this epoch in American life.
