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TCWriter

TCWriter

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Excelling at Chess
Jacob Aagaard
The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on The Wall Street Journal Guide
William E. Blundell

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone - Rajiv Chandrasekaran A gripping recounting of the slow-moving rebuilding effort in post-war Iraq, "Imperial life" is an extremely well-researched effort by one of the only print journalists to cover the entire Iraq story from the "inside." Chandrasekaran lived in Iraq and had ongoing access to the "Green Zone" -- the walled compound within Bagdahd that eventually came to house the American occupying authority.While he lays out the events leading up to the current strife in Iraq, the most interesting information concerns the individuals charged with rebuilding Iraq -- and why they made the decisions they did. The list of mistakes is long, but chief among them is the lack of prior planning, the wildly incorrect assumptions made by officials, the inexperience of the often youthful managers chosen for political loyalty rather than expertise, and the isolation of the Americans from the Iraqis.It offers a great deal of understanding about the conditions in Iraq, and how they got that way.