Friday Find: Charlie Wilson's war by George Crile

Charlie Wilson's war by George Crile: The extraordinary story of the covert operation that changed the history of our times In the last decade, two events have transformed the world: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of militant Islam. There is one man that links them, and his name is Charlie Wilson. In the early 1980s, Wilson - a Texan congressman on the House Appropriations Committee - learned of a ragged band of Afghan 'freedom fighters' whose aim was to resist their Soviet invaders. Wilson became passionate about their cause and managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support them. This is the first book to uncover Wilson's covert deals with the men who would become known as the mujahideen. George Crile spent nearly a decade researching and writing this original account of the biggest, most expensive secret war in history: the arming of the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation. Moving from the secret chambers in CIA headquarters to stand-offs in the Khyber Pass, Charlie Wilson's War is one of the most thorough and vivid descriptions of CIA operations ever written. It is the missing chapter in the geopolitics of our time.