Imperial Life in the Emerald City

By: Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

In this unprecedented account, The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competes with the distractions of a Little America: a half-dozen bars, a disco, a shopping mall - much of it run by Halliburton.

While qualified Americans willing to serve in Iraq are screened for their views on Roe v. Wade, the country is put into the hands of inexperienced 20-somethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. Ignoring what Iraqis say they want or need, the team pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity. Their almost comic initiatives anger the locals and fuel the insurgency.

©2006 Rajiv Chandrasekaran (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

• A National Book Award Finalist

"A devastating indictment of the post-invasion failures of the Bush administration." (Booklist)
"An eye-opening tour of ineptitude, misdirection, and the perils of democracy-building." (Newsday)
"With acuity and a fine sense of the absurd, the author peels back the roof to reveal an ant heap of arrogance, ineptitude, and hayseed provincialism." (Boston Globe)
"As chilling an indictment of America's tragic cultural myopia as Graham Greene's prescient 1955 novel of the American debacle in Indochina, The Quiet American." (New York Times)

A stunning work and performance

I have rarely come across a work of journalism as well written and as perceptive as this one. I was in Iraq before, during, and after the events Mr Chandrasekaran relates, and I knew many of the Emerald City denizens that form its core. His account of those events, and the descriptions of the ineptitudes of the incompetent that we sent there are bang on. But I personally think he could have have been a lot tougher.

The other thing I want to praise is the performance of Ray Porter as the reader in this production. He is superb. I have never, with perhaps the exception of Patrick Tull in the Aubrey-Maturin books, heard such an accomplished reader. I suspect that Mr Porter has had classical stage training, possibly British stage training.

He turns out a stunning performance, effortlessly and faultlessly switching from narrative voice to character voice, complete with appropriate accent and mannerism. His range is so vast that I spent some time with an audio program looking at the wave forms to see whether the producers had brought in other actors to provide the voices. But they all seem to be Mr Porter.

My Arabic is conversational, and more Egyptian than Iraqi, but Mr Porter's Iraqi accent for some of the people quoted in Imperial Life is dead on, if not astonishing.

It is a joy to hear someone this accomplished reading such good writing.

It is just too bad that what Mr Chandrasekaran and Mr Porter give us is an account of how inept and ignorant political appointees messed up post war Iraq so badly that thousands of American troops have suffered and died as a result; not to mention the innocent people of Iraq.

A Disturbing Account

This is a good production. The reader is able to distinguish characters well. The story is a disturbing account of the US occupation of Iraq. The book keeps good time.

sad tale

no wonder our country is in debt to the tune of 17 billion! great job Republicans.

The real tragedy is...

... that Iraq might've worked if we had handled the recovery smarter and faster. This book gives an excellent sense of some of the things we got wrong and, more importantly, why we got them wrong. It is often frustrating to the point of rage. Seeing military and diplomatic subject-matter experts sidelined again and again in favor of inexperienced ideologically-vetted political hacks and corrupt bureaucrats is enough to make you sick. The more I read about the early years of the war, the more it seems like the neocons really were naive enough to believe they could just flit around the world knocking over tyrants and installing Jeffersonian democracies regardless of pesky details like the particular history and culture of whatever country they happened to be "liberating" at the moment. Analogic reasoning leads them into folly over and over again: debaathification will work in postwar Iraq because denazification worked in postwar Germany. Never mind that was sixty years ago, 2,500 miles away, and in predominantly white, non-Muslim, European context. Etc., etc.

Emerald City aka Audacity

I need to say two quick things about this book before I comment on content. #1: Ray Porter is amazing as a narrator. #2: The author does a great job with "just the facts, ma'am" even though his opinions are clear. Look up any number of the things he talks about and you will find supporting facts. I value that with non-fiction.

This is NOT a feel-good book about America's export of democracy or freeing the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein. It is a harsh look at the mechanical parts of occupation and the responsibility you assume when you decide to take over another country. It's too bad the word "hubris" has already been used by another book. This could have been titled the same way.

There are many things I do not understand and this book didn't help. How could we as a country allow bridges to fall into rivers due to infrastructure neglect yet support the billions of dollars it took when we decided to rebuild Iraq? How do lawmakers justify their support of the billions of dollars for this and not for education and health care in our own country? When you look for skills during a crisis, why would political party even matter? And what does it take to put down your political party affiliation and just do the right thing?

There are two particular people in the book who are incredibly effective at carrying out their tasks. Their effectiveness has nothing to do with politics and all to do with pure competence. Reading about them and their M.O. is a great lesson in how to get things done. I was impressed at the odds against them and what they achieved.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City

The book describes the appalling lack of intelligent planning for post war i
Iraq in somewhat more detail than is truly interesting. Unfortunately, the reader uses very fake sounding accents to read the quotes from Iraqis...just reading in a normal voice would be much better.

Devastating Indictment

I think even the most passionate opponent of Operation Desert Freedom hoped that the Bush administration knew more than we did, or had thought things out deeper than we had, or had a plan we were not privy to. History has proven that none of that was true, and this book documents just how little preparation and thought preceded the military decision to invade.

This book is a case history in the folly of trying to impose cultural values at the point of a gun. Of course the U.S. government should have known this was folly - the British empire had demonstrated it in the same region 80 years before. But perhaps nobody in the administration had read David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace".

Hopefully, both Fromkin's book and this one by Rajiv Chandrashekaran will be required reading for all future administrations.

Behind the scenes if the USA occupation authority

It is incredible to find out about waste and cronyism that the Bush administration was responsible for doing the invasion and occupation of Iraq

too many people to keep track of

I found the writing rather doll, there were too many people to keep track of, and the scenarios kept switching back-and-forth to frequently to keep track of. I couldn't find a central character to really care for. It might be interesting to those who like foreign-policy books more than I do.

World class reportage

This is definitely a case of truth beggaring fiction. I found this account of America's occupation and attempted transformation of post-Hussein Iraq to be riveting--a kind of masochistic fascination is perhaps the best way to describe it. Eight years after the book was written, there has still been no adequate response to the indictment it embodies, even though the account Chandrasekaran presents is substantially undisputed.

The picture here is so appalling that it is hard not to suspect (hope?) that the author has neglected to report some positive aspects of the U.S. occupation, but one looks in vain for such material elsewhere. What's more, his on-the-spot access to the events and personnel involved with the story was clearly extraordinary. So in the end his reportage, compellingly straightforward and extremely well written, is convincing.

Ray Porter's voicing of the book was, in keeping with all his work, superb.

Do not be misled by the cover art for the book. The "Green Zone" movie starring Matt Damon was a piece of fiction inspired by but definitely distinct from this non-fiction work.