Jon Lee Anderson – författare

With unprecedented access to the Cuban Government's archives and total co-operation from Che's widow, Aleida March, as well as access to hitherto unpublished documents, including several of Che's personal diaries, this biography of one of history's most fascinating figures by critically-acclaimed New York Times journalist Jon Lee Anderson is truly definitive and monumental - not least because its creation solved a twenty-eight-year-old mystery: the whereabouts of Che Guevara's body...'Masterly and absorbing' -- The Sunday Times'Brilliantly evoked... The portrait is now as complete as it will ever be' -- The Times Literary Supplement'Absorbing and convincing... an indispensable work of contemporary history' ? Guardian'Probably the best biography I have read' -- ***** Reader review'It's hard to imagine that this work can be bettered' -- ***** Reader review'Simply outstanding' -- ***** Reader review'A terrific read and genuinely the type of book you can't put down after you start reading......' -- ***** Reader review***************************************************************A myth in his own lifetime; an international martyr-figure upon his death; a revolutionary fighter; a military strategist; a social philosopher; an economist; a medical doctor; a friend and confidant of Fidel Castro.Che Guevara's dream was an epic one - to unite Latin America and the rest of the developing world through armed revolution, and to end once and for all the poverty, injustice and petty nationalisms that had bled it for centuries. In the end Che failed in his quest but he is recognized as that one-in-a-million personality who just might have pulled it off.Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life shuttles between the revolutionary capitals of Havana and Algiers to the battlegrounds of Bolivia and the Congo; from the halls of power in Moscow and Washington to the exile havens of Miami, Mexico and Guatemala, in a gripping tale of revolution, international intrigue and covert operations. It has an epic sweep as it evokes an era of tumultuous change, describing major events like the Bay of Pigs invasion, the October Missile crisis and Kennedy's assassination, weaving in a cast of historic personalities including Castro, Kennedy, Kruschev, Mao Tse-tung, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.With its painstaking research, never-before-seen documentation and compelling narrative, this is really the ultimate biography of a unique man.

Che Guevara's legend is unmatched in the modern world. Since his assassination in 1967 at the age of 39, the Argentine revolutionary has become an internationally famed icon, as revered as he is controversial. A Marxist ideologue, he sought to end global inequality by bringing down the American capitalist empire through armed guerrilla warfare - and has few rivals in the Cold War era as an apostle of change. In Che: A Revolutionary Life, Jon Lee Anderson and José Hernández reveal the man behind the myth, creating a complex portrait of this passionate idealist. Adapted from Anderson's masterwork, Che transports us from young Ernesto's medical school days to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution; from his place of power alongside Castro to his disastrous sojourn in the Congo, and his violent end in Bolivia. Through renowned Mexican artist José Hernández's drawings, we feel the bullets fly past in Cuba; smell the smoke of Castro's cigars; and scrutinize the face of the weary guerrilla as he is called 'Comandante' for the first time. With astonishing precision, colour, and drama, Che makes us first-hand witnesses to the revolutionary life and times of this historic figure. Combining Anderson's unprecedented access and research with Hernández's emotionally gripping artwork, Che resurrects the man for a new generation of readers.

In the months leading up to the American invasion of Iraq, this New Yorker correspondent “embedded’ himself among the people of Baghdad and, along with a small number of other Western reporters, rode out the entire invasion and much of the subsequent occupation from inside the city. Jon Lee Anderson’s dispatches from Baghdad were immediately and widely recognized as the most important writing anyone was doing on the war anywhere, for any publication. In recognition of its significance, The New Yorker routinely held the magazine open an extra day and set up a special production team to deal with the pieces; around the office, comparisons to John Hersey’s fabled article “Hiroshima” were flying.   The Fall of Baghdad is not a collection of New Yorker pieces, though; it is an original and organically cohesive narrative work that tells the story of what the people of Baghdad have endured at the hands of Saddam Hussein, during the war and during its aftermath. This is not a pro- or anti-war book; the point is to bear witness to what the people in this city have endured, to put a human face on a calamity of epic dimensions. The focus alternates among a small cast of characters, a group of disparate Iraqis who allow Anderson to bring to life different facets of the story he wants to tell; and he fills in the canvas around his figures with rich background that makes their significance sing, and helps bind the book together as the definitive reckoning with one of the most fateful stories of our time.

Jon Lee Anderson first reported from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, covering the US-backed mujahideen’s insurrection against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. Within days of the 9/11 attacks, he was again on the ground as an early eyewitness to the new war launched by the US against the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. At the time, the American military had prevailed on the battlefield, and the newfound peace seemed to offer a precious space for Afghan society to restore itself and to forge a democratic future. But all was not well: Osama bin Laden was still in hiding, the Taliban were stealthily reorganizing for a comeback, and the United States was about to turn its attention to Iraq. To Lose a War collects Anderson’s writing from Afghanistan over a near-quarter-century span, offering a chronological account of a monumental tragedy as it unfolds. The colossal waste, missed signals, and wishful thinking that characterized the twenty-year arc of the US-led war in Afghanistan have consecrated it as one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the modern era, and a bellwether of a larger American imperial decline.

The Classic of Modern War, now with a new introduction from the author‘There are few better guides to the new geopolitics and the incongruous, elusive, demanding realities on the ground’ Rory Stewart‘A resourceful, intrepid, piece of reportage . . . A book of unusual immediacy, one that has the unmistakable ring of authenticity’ Washington Post_______Passionate, idealistic, defiant, guerrillas evoke romantic images of the struggle for a just cause, giving them an almost mythical place among the bravest of warriors. Guerillas is a profound meditation on what it is that makes ordinary people to go to war, make them take the conscious decision to kill and die for an ideal that exists and cross an invisible line, towards a territory where death, and not life, is the main certainty.From the mujahedin of Afghanistan, the FMLN of El Salvador, the Karen of Burma, the Polisario of Western Sahara, to a group of young Palestinians fighting against Israel in the Gaza Strip, Jon Lee Anderson travels through those war zones to create an extraordinary vision of individuals risking their lives in the struggle to change their world against overwhelming and improbable odds.