Imperial Life in the Emerald City

By: Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Language: English

Quality: Like New

Genre: History,

ISBN: 9780747592891

SKU: BESHC901781

Pages: 356

Description: Imperial Life in the Emerald Cityis an unprecedented account of life in Baghdad's Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq. The Washington Post'sformer Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone- into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little America-a half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theatre that screened shoot-'em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning service-much of it run by Halliburton. Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III to the fleet of men hired to implement the idea that Americans could build a Jeffersonian democracy in an embattled Middle Eastern country.