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To Be a Friend Is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind Audiobook, by Kirk W. Johnson Play Audiobook Sample

To Be a Friend Is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind Audiobook

To Be a Friend Is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind Audiobook, by Kirk W. Johnson Play Audiobook Sample
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Read By: Kirk W. Johnson Publisher: Tantor Listen Time: at 1.0x Speed 7.00 hours at 1.5x Speed 5.25 hours at 2.0x Speed Release Date: September 2013 Format: Unabridged Audiobook ISBN: 9781452685595

Quick Stats About this Audiobook

Total Audiobook Chapters:

26

Longest Chapter Length:

45:38 minutes

Shortest Chapter Length:

10:13 minutes

Average Chapter Length:

24:24 minutes

Audiobooks by this Author:

1

Publisher Description

In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID's only American employee who spoke Arabic. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq.

Appointed as USAID's first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he traversed the city's IED-strewn streets, working alongside idealistic Iraqi translators—young men and women sick of Saddam, filled with Hollywood slang, and enchanted by the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be. As sectarian violence escalated, Iraqis employed by the U.S. coalition found themselves subject to a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and death.

On his first brief vacation, Johnson, swept into what doctors later described as a "fugue state," crawled onto the ledge outside his hotel window and plunged. He would spend the next year in an abyss of depression, surgery, and PTSD—crushed by having failed in Iraq.

One day, Johnson received an email from an Iraqi friend, Yaghdan: People are trying to kill me and I need your help. After being identified by a militiaman, Yaghdan had emerged from his house to find the severed head of a dog and a death threat. That email launched Johnson's mission to get help from the U.S. government for Yaghdan and thousands like him abandoned in Iraq. The List Project has now helped more than 1,500 Iraqis find refuge in America. To Be a Friend Is Fatal is Kirk W. Johnson's unforgettable portrait of the human rubble of war and a book that "redeems a measure of pride from a national episode full of tragedy and shame" (George Packer).

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“I have long been an admirer of Kirk Johnson—for his humanitarian advocacy on behalf of forgotten Iraqis and for his honest and poetic writing…. His is a story that arcs from charity to futility to pain to charity again, and how much he needs to tell it equals how much it deserves to be read.”

— David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of The Good Soldiers

Quotes

  • Kirk Johnson is one of the few genuine heroes of America's war in Iraq. . . . Johnson's story is about America's shame, and also its honor. This is an essential book.

    — Dexter Filkins author of The Forever War
  • “A searing account.”

    — New Yorker
  • “It is difficult to imagine a book more urgent than this.”

    — The Boston Globe
  • "[A] truly incredible story.”

    — Ira Glass, host of This American Life
  • “Johnson makes sharp criticisms…A well-written account of one man’s righteous quest to overcome government bureaucracy.”

    — Kirkus Reviews
  • “Kirk Johnson is one of the few genuine heroes of America’s war in Iraq…Johnson’s story is about America’s shame, and also its honor. This is an essential book.”

    — Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of The Forever War

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About Kirk W. Johnson

Kirk W. Johnson has become the leading public voice on the plight of America’s Iraqi allies. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Fulbright Scholar, and recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and Yaddo, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Policy. Founder of the List Project, Johnson lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.