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Michelle Shephard

Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone Hardcover – September 13, 2011

by Michelle Shephard (Author)

12 ratings

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Decade of Fear is a darkly entertaining journey through the complicated, often bizarre world of national security since 9/11. On that night, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard watched the remains of New York’s World Trade Center fall from the sky, wondering what much of the world was asking: “Why?” So began a ten-year search for answers that took her through the streets of Mogadishu and Karachi, into the mountains of Waziristan and behind the wire of Guantanamo Bay two dozen times.

Shephard conducted hundreds of interviews worldwide, and with sharp insight and an appreciation for the absurd, she weaves together stories of warlords, presidents, spies, grieving widows and global terrorists, to describe the historic decade where often the West’s “solutions” for terrorism only served to exacerbate the problem. She cruises with former CIA bosses, runs alongside protestors in the streets of Sanaa to escape fire from Yemen’s security services during experience the Arab Spring, meets victims of terrorism who leave her devastated, and earns enough stamps on her Gitmo Starbucks card for a free latte. Gripping, heartbreaking and infuriating, Decade of Fear broadens our understanding of a decade that was all too often described through panicked rhetoric.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Douglas & McIntyre
Publication date

September 13, 2011
Dimensions

6.34 x 0.93 x 9.32 inches
ISBN-10

155365658X
ISBN-13

978-1553656586
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Michelle Shephard is one of the great national security reporters of our time. In this age of ‘journalists’ embedded in their air-conditioned offices, she is a rare exception: a real reporter”—Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

“Michelle Shephard has delivered a wide-ranging, well-written, witty account of the war that began on 9/11 that is also a serious, knowledgeable and empathetic journey ...She takes the reader on quite a ride. My advice: Go along!”
—Peter L. Bergen, author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda and Holy War, Inc

“Reading Decade of Fear is essential to understanding the post-9/11 world. ... If you care about the world you live in and can only read one book this year, this should be it.” —Marina Nemat, author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran

“...so thrilling and terrific, I wish it wasn’t true.”
Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

“Through her outstanding reporting, Michelle recounts how the ‘war on terror’ has yet to be won and bears witness to the consequences of a decade in which justice was not blind, and the world was only viewed through the prism of fear.”
Lt. General (ret) Senator Romeo Dallaire, author of Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

About the Author

Michelle Shephard is the Toronto Star's national security reporter and speaks frequently on issues concerning terrorism and civil rights. She has appeared on CNN, NBC, Al Jazeera, BBC, and CBC and has contributed to or been quoted in the New York Times and Guardian as well as other television, radio, newspaper and magazines throughout Canada, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Shephard has won Canada's top two newspaper awards -- the National Newspaper Award for Investigations and the Governor General's Michener Award for public service journalism. Her first book, Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr, was published in March 2008 to wide acclaim.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Douglas & McIntyre; Canadian First edition (September 13, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 155365658X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1553656586
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.34 x 0.93 x 9.32 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,650,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews:
12 ratings

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radrich

really telling book

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2012

Verified Purchase

This was a really great book. I heard the author on cbc and picked up the book. I never thought that it would be as powerful as it was. One of the best books I picked up last year. I recommend this book to anyone wanting a better understanding of the effect of 911 around the world. It also shows the arrogance of the US government at times. Really good read

Helpful

WM

Eyewitness to History

Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2011

As is the case for many others, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has made me reflect on their impact over the past decade. To this end, Michelle Shephard`s Decade of Fear has been indispensable. A very personal account of her journalistic efforts to chronicle the war on terrorism over the past decade, Michelle weaves the weft of her narrative over the warp of New York just after 9/11; Somalia after the rise of the Islamic Courts Union and, later, the emergence of al-Shabab; Pakistan after the rebound of the Taliban and al-Qaeda; and Yemen at the formation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the retreat of President Saleh.

Michelle's account puts a human face on the knotty legal, ethical, and political problems the United States and its allies have grappled with as they tried to stop al-Qaeda and its supporters: torture for information, overthrowing stable governments who might align with terrorist groups, rendition, entrapment, collateral damage, and indefinite detention. There are also the less "kinetic" but no-less-knotty problems like countering radicalization online in multi-cultural societies that value free speech.

What struck me most about Michelle's account was her juxtaposition of violence and inanity. Hassan Aweys, the head of a group allied with al-Shabab in Somalia, covets Michelle's boots. Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's ISI and sponsor of some of the United States' worst enemies in the region, does not know who Tony Soprano is but, upon being told, empathizes with his bifurcated psyche. The white-polo-and-khaki-wearing Abu Jandal, UBL's chief bodygaurd, is gracious to Western journalists while explaining that Bin Laden didn't target the civilians in September. "He simply hit targets, and civilians happened to be around." Kitch and karaoke permeate Guantanamo, along with euphemisms to describe poor detainee treatment.

Wisely, Michelle does not try to resolve the contradictions or unravel the knots. But she is hopeful that the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden will take the wind out of the sails of the global jihadi movement and help the United States and its allies put the threat in perspective so they can abandon some of their worst counterterrorism tools. Me too.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Gregory D. Johnsen

Decade of Fear

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2011

The book is a journalistic memoir/travelouge that ranges from New York, Somalia, and Guantanamo Bay to Yemen and Pakistan and back again. I was fortunate enough to read two of the chapters - the ones dealing with Yemen - prior to publication, and now I'm enjoying the rest of the book.

(Full disclosure: I'm thanked in the acknowledgments. But I don't believe my familiarity with the book or the fact that Shephard says some nice things about me blinds me to objectivity. In this case I think familiarity with the material is a plus.)

I think one of the strengths of Shephard's book is that it gives the reader a sense of how the war against al-Qaeda is being conducted in different places around the globe, the centers of upheaval like Yemen and Guantanamo Bay that we often hear about in passing, but never really get quality reports from. It is a story of the other side of the war against al-Qaeda. There is no Iraq or Afghanistan here, no big army or lengthy embedded trips (although there is a "spy cruise), but rather this is how the war looks from the shadows, the places where the US is fighting by other means.

And I think Shephard is the right person to tell the story, a Canadian, writing for the Toronto Star (Hemingway's old paper), she brings a slightly different lens to bear on events than an American might, sort of like looking at yourself in the mirror from a different angle - you see things you never noticed before.

The book is really is a snapshot of a lost decade, one that Shephard's title suggests will ultimately be remembered as a time of fear, when people, to paraphrase Gibbon, were more concerned of their safety than they were of their liberties.

The book does what good reporting is supposed to do: it makes a complicated world understandable without dumbing it down. And that is no easy task. The fact that she does it while telling a compelling story, made all the more real through the men and women she meets, makes reading it entertaining as well as educational.

If you want to know what has been happening in the shadows over the past decade this is a book for you.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Alexandra Posadzki

A real page turner

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2013

Verified Purchase

I laughed, I cried, I gasped with surprise. Absolutely gripping storytelling and rock-solid reporting by Michelle Shephard, who is as insightful as she is ballsy. Highly recommend.

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