Every Man in This Village is a Liar, Megan K. Stack
Every Man in This Village is a Liar, Megan K. Stack
6 Rating(s)
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Every Man in This Village is a Liar
An Education in War

Author: Megan K. Stack

Narrator: Dana Green

Unabridged: 11 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/15/2010

Synopsis

A shattering account of war and disillusionment from a young woman reporter on the front lines of the war on terror.

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a  twenty-five-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories.

Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is Megan K. Stack’s riveting account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy. She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews.

Beautiful, savage, and unsettling, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is a memoir about the wars of the  twenty-first century that readers will long remember.

About The Author

MEGAN K. STACK has reported on war, terrorism, and political Islam from twenty-two countries since 2001. She was awarded the 2007 Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper reporting from abroad and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. She is currently the Los Angeles Times Moscow bureau chief.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Trish on November 10, 2010

Stack uses language like a paintbrush in this memoir of her time covering the Middle East and South Asia as a reporter for the L.A. Times. In fact, she became a foreign correspondent by accident: being in Europe when the Twin Towers fell, she stumbled into Afghanistan. Throughout the book I have hig......more

Goodreads review by Mary on November 21, 2016

This is a memoir based on Megan K. Stack's journalistic travels through several war torn, Middle Eastern countries. The writing is beautiful. War is not. So, it felt to me that the author's use of sweet, flowery writing was at odds with the stink and rot of the violence of war. Perhaps that was part......more

Goodreads review by Carolyn on November 23, 2010

Hmmm - I have a lot of non-fiction. The cover, title and flap sucked me in. She writes for the L A Times - figured she would be a better writer. If you can wade through the flowery language and imagery that she piles on, the experience is pretty interesting. But, she's a war correspondent - put on yo......more

Goodreads review by Claire on April 15, 2011

Afhanistan. Iraq. Iran. Israel. Palestine. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Megan Stack has given us a conscience-ripping look at the wars in the Middle East, the mostly-civilian casualties, and the utter, irredeemable waste of it all. For the most part the author doesn't attempt to take sides or to make politic......more

Goodreads review by Michael on June 04, 2023

Taut and harrowing account of war through the eyes of a female journalist. Some very striking scenes and poetic prose. But often disjointed and meandering.......more

Quotes

Praise for Every Man in this Village is a Liar

“A bell-clear, powerful indictment of the debacle of recent Middle Eastern war policy…. A scathing look at the human costs of war.”
    
     —Kirkus Reviews

"Stack takes readers deep into the carnage where she was exposed to the insanity, innocence, and inhumanity of wars with no beginning, middle, or end. Her soaring imagery sears itself into the brain, in acute and accurate tales that should never be forgotten by the wider world, and yet always are….. Anyone wishing to understand the Middle East need only look into the faces of war that Stack renders with exceptional humanity."

   —Booklist (starred review)


“[A] searing memoir….gripping accounts of the sorrows of war. [Stack’s] vivid, atmospheric prose and keen empathy make her a superb observer of the region’s horrific particulars.” 

     —Publisher’s Weekly

"A brilliant piece of writing that is lucid, compelling, and an education in war for the rest of us too."

    —The Bookseller (UK)

"Every Man in This Village is a Liar is a courageous report from the front lines of the hostilities between the West and the Muslim world. Journalist Megan Stack sheds the customary pretenses of her profession to show us—with blistering eloquence and her own raw nerves laid bare—war’s impact on the non-combatants who bear the brunt of its horrors. You’ll be thinking about this book long after you turn the final page."
   
      —Jon Krakauer, author of Where Men Win Glory
 
"Every Man in This Village is a Liar is an electrifying book by an extraordinary foreign correspondent. Megan Stack has braved the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, decoded the secrets of Israel and Egypt. She shows us what war and terror have done to humanity in the 21st century. Read it if you have the courage to care about your country, its allies, and its enemies."

      —Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes

"‘We were all stripped of technology,’ Megan Stack writes, ‘reduced to our ancient selves, to faces found and words spoken in person.’ And that is the secret of this extraordinary book: Stack removes all the usual nonsense from war reporting. What you read here is the truth, gorgeously rendered in shimmering sentences, but unrelenting all the same. The honesty of her reporting, the clarity of her vision is breath-taking. It is a remarkable piece of work."
      
      —Joe Klein, author of Politics Lost and Primary Colors
 

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