This week’s Free Book Friday prize is:

The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti

A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s explosive account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special forces into competing covert manhunting and killing operations—the new American way of war — Osama bin Laden?s demise was merely one sensational moment in the first decade of America?s shadow war, the transformation of the national security apparatus into a machine calibrated for manhunting operations. Beyond the “big wars? in Afghanistan and Iraq, America has pursued its enemies with killer robots and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, unreliable foreign intelligence services, and ragtag proxy armies. The shadow war has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies, lowered the bar for waging war around the globe, and changed for good how America fights its battles: This is the new way of war. A new military-intelligence complex has emerged.

The CIA, created as a Cold War espionage service, is now more than ever a paramilitary agency ordered by the White House to kill off America?s enemies: from the sustained bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan and the deserts of Yemen and North Africa to the simmering clan wars in Somalia. For its part, the Pentagon has turned into the CIA, dramatically expanding spying missions in the dark spaces of U.S. foreign policy, like Iran. The countries where radical groups have carved out wide, remote swaths of territory are often the very places most openly hostile to American intervention. Where the soldiers can?t go, the United States sends drones, proxies, and guns for hire.

Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti examines these secret wars over the past decade, tracking key characters from the intelligence and military communities across the world. Among the characters we meet in The Way of the Knife are a young CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played, an Air Force test pilot who fired the first drone missile in the Nevada desert, a chain-smoking Pentagon official who ran an off-the-books spying operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a woman from the horse country of Virginia who became obsessed with Somalia and convinced the Pentagon to hire her to gather intelligence about al Qaeda operatives there. Gripping, newsbreaking, and powerfully told, The Way of the Knife reveals the true nature of American warfare in the twenty-first century—a model that is here to stay.

ISBN 9781594204807, Hardcover

Please note: There are 4 pages of the index in the very back of the book that were miscut by the printer, affecting the edges of the page.  This book is NOT repostable for credit swap on PaperBackSwap. But it will make a nice addition to someone’s keeper shelf.

There are currently 61 members wishing for this book. 1 lucky member will win.

To enter, simply leave a comment on this Blog post. You must be a PaperBackSwap member to win.

We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.

You have until Sunday, May, 25 2014 at 12 noon EDT, to leave a comment.

Good Luck to everyone!

Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!

Tags: Book Recommendations, Book Suggestions, Contests, PBS Market

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