Pakistan - by Mary Anne Weaver (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

No nation is more critical to U.S. foreign policy than nuclear-armed Pakistan. Wedged between India and Afghanistan, it is the second largest country in the Islamic world. But with militant Islamists now expanding their control over some of the country's most strategically sensitive areas, there is a growing fear that Washington's most stolid ally in South Asia--at least ostensibly--is unraveling, and perhaps is even on the verge of collapse. With a dozen or so private Islamist armies, a hundred or so nuclear weapons, and a dysfunctional government, Pakistan is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth. Its disintegration would pose an unthinkable threat to the United States and the West, including the prospect of its nuclear arsenal being captured by religious extremists.

In Pakistan, Mary Anne Weaver presents her personal journey through a country in turmoil, reconstructing, largely in the voices of the key participants themselves--General Pervez Musharraf, General Muhammed Zia, and the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto--the legacies now haunting Pakistan in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored jihad in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Combining deep geopolitical intelligence with a vivid portrait of a land--of its people, its mystery, and its clans--Pakistan provides an essential background for anyone who wants to understand the single most urgent problem facing the international community.

Review Quotes

"Valuable and information-rich . . . Full of acute observation, telling detail, and clear insight." --Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"Pakistan is a brilliant portrait of a troubled country, vivid and frightening" --Nayan Chandha, The Washington Post

"Weaver focuses on the interplay between Pakistani politics and society . . . The debility of Pakistan's institutions and its failure to modernize politically is vividly portrayed . . . Her portrait of Pakistan provides carefully crafted glimpses of its many pathologies." --Sumit Ganguly, Foreign Affairs

"Perceptive . . . Weaver has drawn on her superb skills as an evocative journalist to write a book that, by telling stories and describing scenes, gives a sense of Pakistani life that no amount of dry analysis could convey. She is literally a fireside storyteller . . . Those who are even remotely interested in Pakistan's coming crisis should read [this book]." --Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books

"A lucid and compelling guide." --Richard Lacayo, Time

About the Author

Mary Anne Weaver is a writer in residence at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York and is the author of A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam (FSG, 2000). She lives in New York City.