AUDIOBOOK
About
The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and state torture. At the time, this brutal, intractable conflict seemed like a French affair. But from the perspective of half a century, it looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one: a full-dress rehearsal for the amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, struggles in which religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism assume unparalleled degrees of intensity.
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Reviews
"'Algeria' has become almost a codeword among US counterinsurgency specialists-a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq…anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately."
Washington Post Book World
"[This] universally acclaimed history...should have been mandatory reading for the civilian and military leaders who opted to invade Iraq."
Washington Times
"This thirty-year-old history, written before the Iranian revolution, the Algerian civil war, and Al Qaeda, captures a contingent moment in the conflict between the West and the Arab world, when present-day dogmas were hardly imagined by most. It provides a much needed reminder that modern history is not made by the 'clash of civilizations' but by people."
Harpers