About the Author

Roy Gutman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who formerly served as foreign editor for McClatchy newspapers.

Reviews

"In the second edition of "How We Missed the Story," Roy Gutman updates the already compelling case he made for the necessity for U.S. leaders to understand the culture and history of Afghanistan before the invasion of 2001. Those in the highest reaches of America's foreign policy establishment will find it an essential guide to avoiding the blunders of the past. Academics will embrace it as essential reading for our next generation of leaders. And the public will at last have an explanation of why we were not able to win our nation's longest war."--Bill Belding, School of International Service, American University Roy Gutman, a tireless reporter, has written a deeply researched and fascinating account of the various U.S. foreign policy failures that helped account for the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks. Gutman also explains how so many institutions in the United States, from the media to the national security establishment, largely missed what would turn out to be one of the most important stories of our time. This well-written, on-the-mark book is an informative and entertaining read. No other study that examines the events leading up to 9/11 is as persuasive in placing the blame where it belongs on the failure of three successive U.S. presidents to provide the foreign policy leadership and direction needed to address the politics, philosophy, and disposition to violence of Islamist extremism.