Every Man in This Village is a Liar

An Education in War

De: Megan K. Stack

Narrado por: Dana Green

A shattering account of war and disillusionment from a young woman reporter on the front lines of the war on terror.

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a twenty-five-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories.

Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is Megan K. Stack’s riveting account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy. She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews.

Beautiful, savage, and unsettling, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is a memoir about the wars of the twenty-first century that readers will long remember.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Praise for Every Man in this Village is a Liar

“A bell-clear, powerful indictment of the debacle of recent Middle Eastern war policy…. A scathing look at the human costs of war.”

—Kirkus Reviews

"Stack takes readers deep into the carnage where she was exposed to the insanity, innocence, and inhumanity of wars with no beginning, middle, or end. Her soaring imagery sears itself into the brain, in acute and accurate tales that should never be forgotten by the wider world, and yet always are….. Anyone wishing to understand the Middle East need only look into the faces of war that Stack renders with exceptional humanity."

—Booklist (starred review)


“[A] searing memoir….gripping accounts of the sorrows of war. [Stack’s] vivid, atmospheric prose and keen empathy make her a superb observer of the region’s horrific particulars.”

—Publisher’s Weekly

"A brilliant piece of writing that is lucid, compelling, and an education in war for the rest of us too."

—The Bookseller (UK)

"Every Man in This Village is a Liar is a courageous report from the front lines of the hostilities between the West and the Muslim world. Journalist Megan Stack sheds the customary pretenses of her profession to show us—with blistering eloquence and her own raw nerves laid bare—war’s impact on the non-combatants who bear the brunt of its horrors. You’ll be thinking about this book long after you turn the final page."

—Jon Krakauer, author of Where Men Win Glory

"Every Man in This Village is a Liar is an electrifying book by an extraordinary foreign correspondent. Megan Stack has braved the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, decoded the secrets of Israel and Egypt. She shows us what war and terror have done to humanity in the 21st century. Read it if you have the courage to care about your country, its allies, and its enemies."

—Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes

"‘We were all stripped of technology,’ Megan Stack writes, ‘reduced to our ancient selves, to faces found and words spoken in person.’ And that is the secret of this extraordinary book: Stack removes all the usual nonsense from war reporting. What you read here is the truth, gorgeously rendered in shimmering sentences, but unrelenting all the same. The honesty of her reporting, the clarity of her vision is breath-taking. It is a remarkable piece of work."

—Joe Klein, author of Politics Lost and Primary Colors

Some of the writing was silly

'Stars' subtracted off for silly writing style. The last 1/4 of the book is very good, though, and redeems itself. Much has already been said about the contents so I will not repeat. My problem (only 3 stars) is the irregular quality of the writing. When Megan Stack writes as a reporter I appreciated the story. Factual from her viewpoint, straight forward, gripping. But then, too often she writes as if she is a novelist (albeit not a very good one, in my opinion.) Too many (silly) similes and ridiculous metaphors. These writing techniques were overused and often left me scratching my head as to their significance or purpose. In one passage where she told us that (in Egypt) big tanks, during a civil disturbance, were appearing in the streets during foggy weather, she writes "tanks loomed through the fog like dinosaurs....." Huh!
Dinosaurs???? Don't we all know what tanks look like? What Foggy weather looks like? 'Nuf said. Now we have to imagine dinosaurs........something no living being has actually ever seen?
The language is just too funny and incomprehensible.
The story is good, though. Worth reading just for the POV that the middle eastern people have towards America. Read this to get into their minds.....to see how THEY perceive us and why. Quite an eye opener.
You will not think of this "war on terror" the same way you did.

Every American should read this book.

This book gives a good impression of the realities of war and the effects of policy in the Middle East.